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(meteorobs) HB Sparks...

Guys -

This is a cross-posting from our RASC net, regarding something unusual seen from Victoria, British 
Columbia, followed by comments from one of the London, Ontario members.

- Cathy
  Great White (Hey, where's that snow going... ;) North

---------- Forwarded Message ----------

At 12:51 PM 4/5/97 -0800, Bill Almond (B.C.) wrote:
>Greetings All:
>
>OK. Here's an odd one for you. 
>
>A few nights ago (undetermined) at around 10 p.m. PST, Janet, my wife, stood
>looking up at Hale-Bopp from the driveway. She has only a mild interest in
>astronomy but has gained a considerable knowledge of the subject. Her
>distance eyesight is keen and she saw something unusual occur which has me
>puzzled. To her amazement she saw a burst of tiny, pinkish, very bright
>"sparks" detach themselves from the nucleus and speed tailward only to
>vanish a second later. She continued watching, all the time thinking she was
>imagining the scene. Then it happened again, a second time, a minute or so
>later. Janet said they reminded her of tiny sparks thrown off by fireworks.
>It didn't occur a third time.
>
>I've got to admit it does sound unusual. I asked her a dozen questions,
>direction, brightness, duration, and so on. In the end I was sure she saw a
>transient phenomena that was associated with the comet and was not a meteor,
>and certainly not, dare I add, a squadron of accompanying UFOs.
>
>Does anyone know whether this type of phenomena has been recorded before? It
>could be that something that rarely happens during a comet's apparition may
>never have been noticed before, unless one happens to be watching at
>precisely the right time.
>
>Bill Almond
>Victoria, British Columbia

And the London, Ontario member's reply:

From:	"Robert I. Duff", INTERNET:rduff@julian.uwodot ca
DATE:	4/6/97 11:05 AM
RE:	Re: RASC List: HB SPARKS???

Bill:

I was out on the driveway outside my house observing Hale-Bopp with a
telescope on Tuesday, April 1st, between 8:33 p.m. and 9:51 p.m., and again
on Thursday, between around 8:50 p.m. and 9:50 p.m.(EST).

I neither night did I observe anything unusual such as you describe.  Of
course the times were different because of the different time zones.
However, the tail we observe must be hundreds of thousands or millions of
kilometres long. If Janet actually observed something moving from the
nucleus to some distance down the tail its velocity would have to be some
thousands of kilometres per second! The only thing that comes to my mind is
the possibility that there was some interaction between the comet's ion tail
and the solar wind.  Perhaps there was a flare or some other event on the
Sun which caused a disturbance in the comet's ion tail.  As I write this,
however, I realize that this would produce a break in the comet's ion tail
which would be observed by astronomers after the event. At this moment, I
don't know of any such break in the ion tail of the comet being reported.

The possibility that what was observed was the chance alignment of a bright
meteor with the comet comes to mind.  I once observed 2 bright meteors one
after the other in the same place in the sky at twilight.  I thought they
were really 2 fragments of the same meteor that had broken up just before
entering the Earth's atmosphere.  The fact that this was observed twice,
within a minute or so, suggests perhaps that 2 fragments of a meteor entered
the Earth's atmosphere at about the same place, in front of the comet as
observed from your driveway.  Did anyone anywhere else observe meteors in
that same general direction, not necessarily in line with the comet, at
about the same time?

I would be interested to hear an explanation for this mystery!

Bob Duff
London, Ontario