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(meteorobs) Perseids Aug. 11/12
Great skies, good meteor shower, frustrating data.
I went to White River Canyon near Mt. Hood, OR, and observed for Teff=5.31
under exceptionally clear skies, by far the best I have ever observed
meteors under. My LM values after moonset were around 7.1. I recorded
477 meteors, 344 of them Perseids. Unfortunately, I think the novel
experience of being under such dark skies skewed my magnitude data. When
I did magnitude distributions for Perseids and Sporadics, the mean
magnitudes came out to be 2.2 and 3.0, about what one should expect under
magnitude 6.5 skies. Compare my data to Marco Langbroek's, posted here
earlier. He apparently observed a very faint portion of the Perseid
stream (mean magnitude 3.3???), but his sporadic magnitudes are right on
track for his LM. I got a high number of sporadics, as I should have, but
my magnitude distribution is disproportionately bright.
I haven't done any serious counting for awhile; I should have gotten out
on some premax nights to get the hang of it again. Oh, well, I'm not sure
how much use my data will be, but here is my summary. I may try to go out
again tonight, but sky conditions look iffy and I'm really tired right
now.
Observations 1997 Aug. 11/12 Wes Stone (STOWE)
White River Canyon, OR 45N 18' 121W 39'
UT # #
Interval Teff LM PER SPO
0533-0645 1.20 6.3 26 13
0645-0745 0.94 6.8 49 18
0745-0845 1.00 7.1 103 31
0845-0953 1.04 7.1 71 38
0953-1103 1.13 7.1 95 33
Totals 5.31 344 133
For the purposes of this summary, all non-Perseids were counted as
Sporadics.
MAGNITUDE DISTRIBUTIONS
PER (Total 344, M=2.21)
mag. class -7 -4 -3 -2 -1 0
# meteors 1 3 3 4 6 31.5
mag. class +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6
# meteors 50 91 72.5 58 22 2
SPO (Total 133, M=3.04)
mag. class -2 -1 0 +1 +2
# meteors 1 0 5 12 26.5
mag class +3 +4 +5 +6
#meteors 32 39 15.5 2
--
Wes Stone <wstone@lclarkdot edu> Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR
SKYTOUR Amateur Astronomy Hypertext:
http://www.lclarkdot edu/~wstone/skytour/skytour.html
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