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(meteorobs) Impression Dutch 17/18 experience
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Hello everybody,
This is a weird campaign. Last night (early in the evening) it looked like
we would have to go to the east of our country again. We had already left,
when we received word that there could possibly be cloud interference coming
from |Germany in the east later that night, but.....that the center of our
country was clearing! One of our 2 teams already had reached the publ;ic
observotory at Lattrop in the east of the Netherlands, but Robert and I were
just 30 km east of our regular location Biddinghuizen and decided to turn
and go to that location.
When we arrived, the sky was as clear as crystal. Much to my amazement, I
counted an Lm of 6.0, which is perhaps the best I have ever experienced for
moonlight conditions! We could even see some marginal milky way from
Cassiopeia to Cygnus! So we decided to stay and setup. After setting up our
photographic equipment, we took a short sleep, and started observations
fresh (...) at around 0:45 local time (23:45 UT).
In the early part of observations, the Leonids were showing a clear
activity, though evidently less than the previous night. Several attractive
bright meteors up to -3 appeared. But later that night, rates were
evidently and seriously in decline: we really experienced (so to speak) that
they did fall off markedly, the stream just petterred out so to speak. It
was brilliantly clear, but also frosty (temperatures slightly below
freezing) and the eastern wind was strong and very cold. The last hours were
really unpleasant because of the cold wind and the actually quite unaspiring
activity around that time.... Meteors now seemed less bright too.... But our
perseverance was rewarded with a beautifull brilliant blue -6 Leonid at
5:12:16 UT that had 2 minutes of persisting train, drifting gently away....
This night, we also saw some nice Taurids including a loooooooooong -2.
Tomorrow or the day after, I will mail my data of last two nights. Like I
wrote before, definitely enhanced activity, a nice show (particularly 16/17
and early in the night 17/18, but less than we had hoped for and in that
aspect slightly disappointing. But it was a good campaign.
Last night we certainly obtained some multistation photographic orbits of
Leonids.
-Marco Langbroek
(Dutch Meteor Society)
Robert Haas, Eikenhorst 94, NL-2402 SH, Alphen aan den Rijn, The Netherlands
Phone: +31-172-441270; E-mail1:delpsurf@cistrondot nl ; UIN 3467462
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