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(meteorobs) Re: Alan Hale/Art Bell+more
Fri night/Sat morning (Mar 7/8) Alan Hale will be the guest on the Art Bell
show. Art starts at 11 PM PST, 2 AM EST. I think Art is intelligent enough
to see through the worst of the nonsense but he attracts listeners by
dabbling in the occult. There must be three orders of magnitude more people
into UFO's than into astronomy. It is much easier to fantasize than to think.
I saw the comet this morning in semi-dark sky, LM 5.8 in town. Mag 0 with a
5-degree tail. Will go out to the remote site in the morning. The tail on
Bennett in 1970 is by far the brightest I've seen ; was 10 degrees and very
easy in a bright MIami sky. Looked truely like a flaming sword. All other
comet tails have been much more delicate.
Tim wrote the following:
>beta Cygnids:
>Definitely not the same. Liller mentioned mid September. Sky and Telescope
>carried a report in September 1981, p236, which gives the observation
>circumstances, first observed 1980 September 16-18 from radiant near 19h,
>+25°. The observers were P MacKinnon, R Keen and G Kiladis. Keen is the
>same one coincidentally that I asked for an email address on meteorobs, but
>for different reasons. The S&T report mentions that several Belgian
>observers, including Paul Roggemans, did not confirm any activity around
>these dates. It also references IAU Circulars 3528, 3542 and 3545. That's
>all that I have on this shower. It is not listed by Jenniskens in his
>outburst paper, and I don't know whether there were any positive
>observations since 1980.
>
I had referred to this 1980 Sep activity some months back. That month was
mostly clear here, and I was out observing and plotting for a long series of
nights, after 1 AM. During that entire time I had no impression of anything
coming from Cygnus, and nothing appeared on the plot charts either. So
this report had me scratching my head in amazement.
There was a roughly analogous report during the lunar eclipse of 1975 May
30. One group out West reported large numbers of meteors, both naked-eye
and "in telescopes," as they put it. I was observing from the Keys, mostly
naked-eye, and saw only a handful of meteors.
Winter essentially ended here after mid-January, and spring quickly became
entrenched. We've been in the upper 80's almost every day for 3 weeks.
Hasn't hit 90 yet, but inland towns have been to 93. Not summerlike yet;
that would be low- to mid-90's. The past 3 calendar months had 60 days in
the 80's and only 11 nights below 50. Downright warm. We close the windows
by day to keep the heat out, open at night to let the cool 60's in. The
Gulf water is nearing 80 also, the point at which Floridians find it warm
enough for swimming. Getting seriously dry ; water restrictions have begun.
Too many people waste enormous amounts of water on their lawns. Weather
doesn't seem ideal anywhere right now. At least we're escaping the violent
weather so widespread in other areas.
Norman
Fort Myers, Florida