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(meteorobs) Geminids in SoCal
Hi All
Joe, Bob and I spent Thursday night at Yermo and as he won't be anywhere
civilised for the next two days Bob asked me to make a quick report. Let
me first of all say that it is now approaching 4 PM on Friday and the last
36 hours have been very busy for me, with less than two hours of sleep. On
the way to Yermo yesterday afternoon I was involved in a slight altercation
with a tandem trailer truck on a freeway when the driver decided he liked my
lane better than his own and just drove into the side of me. Luckily only
a small amount of damage was done to my car and after getting homeI have
been kept busy getting estimates and negotiating with the truck owner up
until this time. When I finish this message I am going to bed. Bob had
his problems also when he was pulled over by the CHP for having so much
stuff in hi car that he couldn't see out of the rear window. When it was
pointed out that the car had a right side mirror the Chippie became more
friendly and joined in a conversation with Joe about meteors. After
meeting Bob and Joe at Barstow, I followed them to the site which I thought
Bob said would be along two miles of dirt road when we get off the freeway.
Let me say that these miles were REAL country miles complete with rocks and
gullies. I had to remind Bob that I was driving a sports car, not my dirt
bike. As far as finding the site I'll let Bob tell that story as I'm
beginning to ramble too much.
Now for the part you've been patintly waiting for, the meteor viewing. It
was fantastic!! It actually started about 9 PM with many real bright ones
ranging up to -4, with fireballs, trails, yellow ones, blue ones and
several superb bright white ones. I was not keeping records, so you will
have to wait for their reports in a few days time for the details. Suffice
to say that Joe was counting 30 to 50 an hour before midnight and without
doing any analysis Bob reckoned on rates of 75 to 100 per hour. It was
fantastic we were seeing three and four at a time; sometimes all Geminids,
sometimes there was a sporadic amongst them. All I can say is that I was
really impressed. I saw more meteors last night than I had seen in total
before.
I was busy trying my new technique using my camcorder to record Bob's audio
decriptions with UT showing on the screen. At each of his comments I would
press a "Index" button to set down a position marker on the tape. On
playback it would "Fast Forward" up to the marker and then go into "Play"
mode for twelve seconds in which the audio report could be heard. The tape
was run through without stopping during recording while the markers were
laid down and during playback it would search for these markers. The
operating technique needs a little development, but when we ran a few
minutes of tape through this morning and it seemed to be doing as well as
expected. Certainly, it went to the right points and Bob's commentry could
be heard quite clearly while it displayed UT, correct to half a second.
When I get time I'll set it up on my VCR and see how it looks, and how easy
it will be to transfer the information onto paper.
Lastly, by dint of perceverance and drawing a very detailed map of the
area, I have persueded Bob And Joe to come up to Gorman for a night of
viewing on Saturday night to join the South Bay Astronomical Society's
Geminid night. I look forward to that.
I'm going to bed now!
Good night
Ron