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(meteorobs) Smashing Geminids!!!!!




YESSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy cow what a great show the Geminids performed last night! Meteors:
multitudes! Fireballs: how many would you like...?!???? We really have gone
out of our minds in Biddinghuizen last night!

After a full week of gray skies and very unfavourable predictions, the Gods
up there decided that it would clear just in time for us to see the show. We
have had a clear sky with Lm ~6.7 from about 21h am local time (20 UT) to
dawn. When we arrived in Biddinghuizen around 19h UT, the edge of the front
was right in the zenith, and a clear dark sky made it's entrance. This
remained so untill about the last 1.5 hours of the night, when we had some
patches of cirrus coming in (but we could still observe very well).

We just arrived home so I can't give exact numbers yet. But each of us must
have hundreds of meteors individually (we estimate at least 600-700. At
least, I say...). The show was especially spectacular around and short after
local midnight, with the radiant high in the sky and only some hours after
theoretical maximum (18:30 UT). Around local midnight (say 23-1 UT) we had
several Geminids PER MINUTE appearing (individually!) and during some
moments we experienced 'traffic jam' in recording the data.

Many many bright ones, especially in the second half of the night. The
brightest one we saw was -8. I also saw a -5 and we all saw several -3, and
many many in the 0 to -2 range. We expect at least some 150 phtographic
hits, if not more.

Anyhow, we ran both visual and photo/video multistation campaign last night.
At Biddinghuizen, Koen Miskotte, Jos Nijland, Casper ter Kuile and me were
present (Robert unfortunately had to stay home due to the flu). During some
time, we were also accompanied by Mrs. Appel, the wife of the farmer on
which property we observe, some of her relatives and neighbours (including
their little sons). Mrs. Appel and a relative also observed the -8  and the
very high hourly rates around local midnight and were very enthousiastic,
notwithstanding the cold. We had friendly frosty temperatures around -5 C
last night. All equipment including ourselves covered with frost.

Yeah, this was great.... Geminids are really a beautifull stream. They give
a special feeling, as does the wintertime conditions. It's all so
beautifull.... Bright meteors with CLASS and DISTINCTION, 'aristocrats'
among meteors so to speak. And then, after daybreak, that special morning
winter sun light effect on the white frosty meadows: you get the feeling it
is christmas time arriving... Being the last well observable major stream
this year, the Geminids allowed us a very satisfying end to the otherwise
(as far as weather was concerned) rather unfortunate 1996. What a
spectacular little Gems among meteors are these...!

More news and data will follow after we have taken some sleep and have had
the time to evaluate our tape recordings. I used 1.5 tapes this night,
thought I all kept it very short!

Best wishes and stay tuned for more,


Marco Langbroek
DMS team Delphinus, the Netherlands
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