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Re: (meteorobs) Observing Aurigid attempt
At 04:08 AM 09/01/98 EDT, GeoZay wrote:
[snip]
>I said the heck with it and turned around.
RATS....wish you and Bob could have been out there last night; we saw
considerable numbers of what Lew thought might be early d Aurigids; would
have been nice to have another opinion. Lew didn't get to plot since he was
talking to me all night, trying to help me over the beginning-observer's
humps such as finding the common constellations and stars, estimating
magnitude, recording data, etc. Was very interesting and enjoyable, it was.
Hope to do it again real soon. Also hope to be better prepared with enough
of my own equipment next time, too. Lew even had to loan me a dark pencil
when I discovered my BIC wouldn't write upside down...
I arrived on site around 05h45 UTC, and we settled down for some
meteor-watching by 05h55. It took me close to an hour to finally find a
rhythm by which I felt I was recording some useful data (that I could read,
anyway). Even then, however, I only counted AURs; everything else I counted
as a SPO since I didn't (and still don't) know the constellations or
radiant locations. My Teff was very low since I spent considerable time
trying to find the pencil, the red flashlight Lew loaned me, put my glasses
down so I could see what I was writing, figure out what mag I thought I
saw, whether the meteor might be an Aurigid, look at my watch, write it all
down, find my glasses again, get them on without putting out my eye, then
pull the sleeping bag back over. Altogether, I doubt I spent less than 30
seconds per meteor doing all of that. Total time about 147 minutes minus
one short break of 3 minutes and 30 secs per each of the 25 recorded
meteors; call my Teff about 2.1. I spent mucho, mucho time trying to find
the star patterns that Lew was trying to point out for areas 6 and 7. Part
of my problem was not being able to actually see the stars as pinpoints due
to uncorrected astigmatism because of an obsolete eyeglasses prescription.
And even though Lew said he thought I was seeing an Lm around 5.7 with my
star counts in Area 6, I know that he was seeing some meteors that I never
noticed, probably +3 or fainter. I only logged a couple of +3s, all the
rest I listed as +2 or brighter. And as Lew noted in his report, I
considered the fireball that we both caught as something like -6, and I
thought the color was a bright bluish-white. What was really funny about
the fireball was that Lew was pointing out a star just above the trees when
the fireball swept along right in front of his finger, ala Babe Ruth! We
also saw at least half a dozen trains lasting at least 1-1/2 seconds,
something I've never seen from a meteor before. And at 07h03, within a span
of just 3 or 4 seconds, THREE meteors, only one of which was an AUR,
appeared, two almost simultaneously. Quite a show for not being a major
shower! I'll have to get together with Lew to discuss how to report my own
data; but I counted 8 AURs and 17 SPOs of which many were members of the
other radiants which Lew listed but which I didn't try to trace back. I
stopped counting at 08h02 when haze was clearly obscuring the sky.
Thanks, Lew, for having me along! A more patient teacher would be hard to
find. And thanks, too, to the Boston ATMs for making the site in Westford
available.
Clear skies (now I have a better idea just what that really means!),
SteveH
Shrewsbury Mass
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