[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

(meteorobs) Aurigids...



Greetings all, 

Just got home tonight from an out-of-town excursion to darker skies...
Friday night got cloud and haze, Saturday night got a <brief> clear patch
before cloud moved in, Sunday night got 3 hours (dodging heavy fog), and
Monday night got cloud :(

In the <brief> clear patch Saturday night (Aug. 30/31), not even long enough
to get my gear set up, I saw a beautiful 0.5 mag meteor at 2.37 UT, very
long, headed across below head of Draco to below bowl of Little Dipper,
slow, nice yellow, broke into 2 pieces, main piece kept going, fainter
secondary piece stayed in line with the first, but followed behind it...
beautiful!  

Wayne wrote:
>The alpha-Aurigids (AUR) have a narrow peak (ZHR=~10) at about O hours UT
on September 1st. Rates are in the visual range (ZHR>3) for three nights
either side of that, and exceed 1 per hour through Sept 5th
>The delta-Aurigids (DAU).. have lower rates. The peak rate is about ZHR=6,
with the official start of the shower at the time the alpha-Aurigids end on
the 5th.  However the IMO record of observations since 1988 suggest that it
may be visible earlier

Sunday night (Aug.31/1) I dodged massive fog banks, but managed to observe
from 6.15 to 9.15 UT.  Saw 28 meteors.  Called 13 sporadics, 6 DAU's, 3
PER's, 2 SDA's, 2 SPI's, and only 2 AUR's.  Saw another nice DAU just after
I signed off.   For me, AUR's were just about non-existent.  However, the
DAU's were very nice.  My couple SPI's were quite pretty, nice and slow. 

I wasn't plotting Sunday night, but should have.  

Timothy Trice wrote:
> 08 (month)  29/30 (day)  A couple came out of Orion and one out of Gemini.

Of my sporadics, several seemed to be coming up from under Gemini, and
several from below Orion, as it was rising.  Probably just sporadics...
which is what I called them, but in hindsight wished I had plotted them...

& George wrote:
> for Aug 31/Sep1, 1997 ....meteor activity was about as slow as a herd of
snails. The
alpha Aurigids were a big dud from my location. Although I plotted, it
initially seems that I've only recorded 3 AUR's out of a total of 34 meteors.

& Mark wrote:
>Aug 31/Sep 01 ... no great activity being noted from the AUR radiant. In 4
hours, a total of 43 meteors were observed, 5 of which were AURs.

Well, herd of snails, eh?? ;)  No snails here, but checked my meteor bag to
make sure I didn't bring home any mice... and had a nice encounter with a
very large frog... ;))

- Cathy
  Great White North
  Ottawa, Canada