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(meteorobs) Jan 21/22 obs. meteors and [no] Tempel-Tuttle



Hello everybody,

After almost two months of continuous very bad weather, last night was 
clear again. So I made a three-hour session to check if the delta 
Cancrids were still there (yes) and enjoy and chart the sporadic 
background activity. Skies were reasonably clear (perhaps a slight touch 
of haze left), temperatures a mild frost of -2 C (so the ski-suit my 
brother-in-law donated to me came in handy).
Because I had a tight schedule for today and tomorrow, I choose to 
observe in the evening, starting around 21h local time and stopping at 
0:20 local time. The first 1.5 hours actually turned a little bit boring: 
a conspicuous lack of attractive meteors, all faint instead. During the 
whole session, I did not see anything brighter than +2. In the second 
half, some Cancrids appeared, enough to recognize their presence. data 
are listed below. After 3.12h, I quit. Including the 17 meteors from the 
very short January 2/3 session, I stopped just one meteor short of 
completing my first 50 meteors of this year.

Before the meteor observations (and a second attempt after), I tried to 
get a look at the Leonid comet Temple-Tuttle. That proved a 
dissappointment... I tried to locate it for an hour using my 4.5" 
Newtonian (36x, over 1 degree of field), my 20x80 binoculars and 7x50 
binoculars. It was not difficult to find the location where it should be, 
but there really was nothing there that looked like a comet... So either 
it is much fainter than expected, or otherwise very diffuse. After 
quiting the attempt, I had no difficulty in sweeping up messier 1 (crab 
nebula) with my 20x80, and I also located a number of obscure clusters in 
the area. Well, I'll keep trying if coming evenings allow.

Below my meteor data of last night.

-Marco Langbroek (the Netherlands)


Date: Jan 21/22, 1998
Location: Voorschoten, the Netherlands, 52d 07' N, 4d 28' E


UT            Teff   Lm    dCnc   Spo
20:02-21:00   0.92   6.3    1      8
21:00-22:10   1.10   6.2    1     10
22:10-23:20   1.10   6.2    2     10

TOTAL         3.12  <6.2>   4     28    32


stream        0  +1   +2   +3   +4   +5
Sporadics     -   -    2   13    8    5
d Cancrids    -   -    1    -    3    -