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(meteorobs) Eclipse and meteors!
Karen and I went out to the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary to join fellow
NSAACers observing the eclipse tonight. Among the folks we met or met again
were Mary, Dennis, Mike, and Barry. The eclipse looked like it would be
severely hampered by cirrus and cirrostratus forming in nasty waves
overhead. But at the last moment, just after the umbra began to creep
across the lunar disk, the sky started clearing rapidly! I snapped several
bracketed wide-field exposures of the stages of the eclipse, including a
(hopefully) beautiful totality shot.
From the time of first contact to mid-totality, the visual limiting
magnitude dropped from about 4.7 to just barely 6.5! Within ten minutes
after third contact, however, the full moon began to retake the sky, and LM
skyrocketed by perhaps 0.4 magnitudes every ten minutes. By 00:15 local
time, 35 minutes after the end of totality, the sky had once again washed
out below LM=5.0. In about Teff=1.6, I plotted 11 meteors, and had the
treat of observing M31, M33, h & chi Persei, and the North America nebula
naked-eye during a full moon.
Several of the folks present did some heavy deep-skying during totality,
and at least one person (Dennis) snapped a roll of nice prime-focus shots
with his 10" SCT. A chilly yet heart-warming astronomical evening! Now to
get up for work. :)
Clear skies,
Lew
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Karen Simmons & Lew Gramer lewkaren@tiacdot net http://www.tiacdot net/users/lewkaren
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