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Re: (meteorobs) Re: stationary Perseid



In a message dated 98-10-06 15:04:11 EDT, you write:

Malcolm<< 
 Also it wasn't clear in many cases whether it was a meteor or some
 long-period flashing satellite or optical counterparts to gamma-ray
 bursters etc..  My strong feeling as a visual observer was that there
 were too many to be all meteors, since there weren't the corresponding
 number of very short, but not point meteors.  A `guesstimate' frequency
 is 1 per 500 meteors, but it could be way off.  I'd have to look through
 many thick volumes to do a count.
  >>

I was in my darkroom this morning catching up with print making of meteors. I
had about 8 negatives accumulated since the Perseids to make prints off of.
Just happens that one of them would qualify as being "Very Short"....that is
some small fraction of a degree long. Printing the whole negative onto  5X7
paper you definitely need your glasses to see it. These often seem to have the
shape almost similar to that of a short bird feather. I made a print of
another short meteor like this either earlier this year or sometime late last
year? I recall visually observing the previous one and at the time I called it
a Pointer. On the print you can barely see some travel though. Without having
to go thru all my meteor reports for the last 8 years, I would guess that
perhaps I've reported about a half dozen Pointers. I think the last one I've
seen was the one I've mentioned here about photographing and later finding
some travel on the print.
George Zay

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