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Re: (meteorobs) new minor shower in July ?
I just pulled this off a bulletin board on aol. Perhaps this could be the
meteor shower that was talked about?
George Zay
>>Subject: Minor Shower? July 17
Date: Sat, Jul 18, 1998 10:26 EDT
From: <A HREF="aol://3548:JWHoltz">JWHoltz</A>
Message-id: <1998071814263300.KAA12603@ladder03.news.aol.com>
Just as twilight was ending last night (around 2h UT, July 18), and shortly
after seeing a nice Iridium flare, one observer yelled out that he just saw
two short meteors "back to back" heading south. Someone else chimed in that
they had seen a similar meteor, again heading south, just a minute earlier. We
all looked up and couldn't believe what we were witnessing.
Starting at about 9:50 pm EDT July 17 (1:50 UT July 18), there was an
unexpected "shower" of meteors! The rate started out at 1 or 2 per minute, but
then tapered down and virtually died out by 10:15 pm EDT. The meteor streaks
were very short, only 1 or 2 degrees long. The magnitude was around 2. The
trails faded out immediately. The meteors may have been concentrated around
the Big Dipper, Draco, Bootes, and Hercules area. All of them were heading
due south, so we couldn't determine a likely radiant.
As far as we know, there is no known shower for this date. We speculated that
it may have been the tail end of a rare daytime shower. Did anyone else see
these? Anyone have any ideas?
John Holtz
JWHoltz@aol.com<<
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