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(meteorobs) Orionids Oct 21-22
Greetings all...
Best laid plans sometimes go awry.
After taking the last year to learn the locations of the major constellations,
and some star names, I had planned to use the Orionid peak to actually collect
some legitimate data to report to you all..
Knowing that I'm still a little slow with collecting data, I decided to record
my info into my cassette tape recorder, and decode the data today, and submit
my report...
Carole and I arrived to our dark sky site in Joshua Tree national park, Palm
springs Ca. about 2230 local time, and set up to spend the night.
Immediately we started seeing meteors, mostly Orionids, and a few sporadics.
For about the first hour we just sat and passively watched the show, Practiced
locating some stars and constellations, and tried learning some star count
areas for determination of limiting magnitude.
The plan was to begin data collection in earnest after midnight local, when
our position on this rock turned to face into the meteor stream.
For about 3.5 hours I called out Orionids vs. sporadics. Even determined that
a few were definitely Taurids, owing to their radiant and speed. I also noted
the path of most meteors. (i.e. toward Deneb.) At 0330 local we decided that
it was time for some fresh coffee so during our short break I played back some
of what we had recorded. (my recorder is voice activated, and records in a
half speed mode if selected) The tape should have lasted thru the night. To my
dismay I discovered that it recorded continuously for the first hour... from
2300 to 2400, and nothing else...Bummer...
Bob, I can hear your Laughter from here...
Still we saw a most spectacular show...from very dark skies, we saw many
brilliant meteors. The brightest of which I called a Taurid, about -3. Most
Meteors were fairly fast and in the +2 to -1 Mag. range. There were lulls
during which no meteors were seen for several minutes, but there were also
many episodes of multiple simultaneous or overlapping meteors. One memorable
event was when a pair of Orionids entered about a quarter second apart,
following each other by about 10 degrees in Parallel but not identical Paths.
These two were separated by 3-4 degrees, were both -2 mag and had a fairly
long (comparatively) path, about 40 deg, and persistent trains of at least 2
seconds... They first appeared nearly directly overhead, and arced down to
the WSW. Followed almost immediately by a couple of other mixed bag meteors
... Awesome... I'm going to estimate that we saw about 25 meteors per hour,
thru the course of the night. We observed until the morning twilight obscured
all but the most prominent stars.
Hours observed 2300-0600 local PDT, (0600-1300 UT) Less about 0.5 hr break.
We faced directly due east and used the Pleades as the center of our field of
view until the radiant was Higher than 45 degrees, then we used Betelgeuse.
Average limiting mag was between 6.0 and 6.5
Noting the recent string about temps: It was colder than a welldiggers butt.
Don