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(meteorobs) Re: NM 97 Oct 21/22 Orionids poor in town
I observed for 68 minutes out front with the house shading the moon, Oct
21/22. 425 - 533 AM (825 - 933 UT) only 4 Orionids and 1 sporadic seen, sky
LM5.0. A reasonably good sky, so I was expecting to see around 10 meteors
in this prime Orionid hour. Very disappointing. Facing NW I was almost
unobstructed straight right and left, but trees intruded slightly in the
lower corners. My DCV pattern indicates that the latter can be neglected --
I don't see much away from central vision anyway. This was ground-level
observing from a new chaise lounge, quite comfortable.
The bugs are decreasing in the very dry weather we have had since the deluge
3 weeks ago. They live about 2 weeks, and about that long ago was expected
the peak of the encephalitis outbreak. But I haven't heard of any more
cases. So Oct 24/25, Sat AM, I want to go out to the remote site with the
moon situation much improved, to get something from the last of the 1997
Orionid max period. I find burning mosquito coils are quite effective.
Am anxious to do some observing again, and a possible good period lies
just ahead. Taurids usually get rather good the last week of October, if
they intend to do something this year. In the past my best Taurid years end
in 1,4,7, and 8 ; so there's hope for the present year.
The weather has been good for a while with a decent cold front coming by.
The first one always feels strange when we drop well below 70 F , not used
to the coolness. Have been down to 62 F. But it's been very comfortable
and fairly dry. Back to some late-season heat for the weekend, should get
to 90 F again. Might be a little fog around but shouldn't be a wipeout.
From Marco:
I observed a magnitude zero >point< meteor in the Aquila counting
>area. The funny aspect was, that it had a persistent train, that was
>visible as a small rapidly fading nebulous sub-globular cloud for about 1.5
>secs after the meteor disappeared. Very funny to see, never seen such a
>thing before.
These are rather rare. I have maybe half a dozen of these in my life. The
best was, I think, a 5-second train which looked indeed like an unresolved
globular cluster fading away.
On the report Mark received:
This was seen in Hume,
>Ohio which is about 6-7 miles from Lima, Ohio. Shortly after this large
>meteor, there were two smaller ones located in the western sky which went
>from East to West.
><end report>
Sounds like a couple of Orionids to me. I don't know what the brighter
first one would have been.
Norman
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