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(meteorobs) October 20/21 1998 observation
Hello,
Here the data report for my observation on October 20/21. I observed
almost exactly 4 hours at my Casselman location. The sky was nice and
clear with a touch of haze early, but my limiting magnitude still
managed to hover near 6.4. The windchill was quite treacherous despite
a not so cold -1C. The site is located on top of a hill, and wide open
to even the slightest breeze. So I usually use the car to shield against
the wind. Anyway, the effort was certainly well worth it as myriads of
meteors of all kinds were seen. Orionids were quite excellent.
My best one hour period had 30 Orionids alone. It is also
noteworthy to mention that my final 22 minutes produced a
surprising 14 ORI. As for other active showers, the N. Taurids
had 3 faint meteors the first hour, then quiet the rest of the night.
The S. Taurids produced 5 slow meteors with the brightest one at
magnitude -2. Only one Leo Minorid was seen. I have no doubt that this
shower exist after seeing some reasonable rates the last few years.
The sporadics were also doing fine with one of the -4 fireball leaving
a nice 7 second train.
I was not plotting that night. I felt activity reached a level too
high that I wanted the least possible dead time. I did however plot
the 3 bright fireballs to use for FIDAC reports. Will send the reports
as soon as I can. The -8 magnitude ORI was quite the bomb in the sky.
The train left from that monster lasted a full 8 minutes before
completely vanishing. At the first minute, the train curved, twisted and
seperated in two parts. After that, a small clump remained visible.
The patch of train slowly, gradually faded as it drifted some distance.
It was a great night. Total of 164 meteors in only 4 hours.
Lew Gramer wrote:
>BTW, were you really impressed with rates last night, Pierre, or just the
>impressive fireballs? I also got to observe for Teff ~= 2.6 between 11:30
>and 2:15am EDT last night: a fine show, but not outstanding for rates...
Lew, to me, the Orionids produced rates that I have not seen at this level
ever before. As for the fireballs, they were impressive but, if you look
at the magnitude distribution table, and consider the high number of
meteors, the number of fireballs that I saw is not that unusual.
The vast majority of Orionids still turn out to be the magnitude
+3 and +4 meteors. The two -4 sporadics are probably a coincidence.
Only the -8 ORI fireball seems to be the unusual brightness of the night.
Here is data below:
DATE: October 20/21 1998 BEGIN: 5:35 UT END: 9:55 UT
LOCATION: Long: -75.063 West; Lat: 45.269 North Elevation:100m
City & Province: Casselman, Ontario, CANADA
OBSERVING PERIODS: 0 = none seen; / = shower not watched.
PERIOD(UT) FIELD Teff F LM SPO ORI EGE NTA STA LMI
5:35-6:37 SE60 1.00 1.00 6.35 10 12 2 3 1 0
6:37-7:37 " 1.00 " 6.38 10 26 0 0 0 0
7:37-8:20 " 0.68 " 6.38 7 18 3 0 2 1
8:29-9:33 " 1.01 " 6.38 15 30 0 0 2 0
9:33-9:55 " 0.37 " 6.28 8 14 0 0 0 0
----------------------------------------------------------------
Totals: 4.06 50 100 5 3 5 1 = 164
MAGNITUDE DISTRIBUTIONS:
SHOWER -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5
SPO 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 1 2 0 6 9 11 18
ORI 1 0 0 0 0 2 1 1 3 3 17 27 34 11
EGE 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 1 1
NTA 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1
STA 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 3 0
LMI 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
--------------------------------------------------------------
Totals: 1 0 0 0 2 3 2 2 5 3 26 38 51 31
--------------------------------------------------------------
SKY OBSCURED:
0% all
--------------------------------------------------------------
Total dead time: 7.5 minutes (including plotting time)
Dead time plots only: 6 minutes for total 3 plots
Breaks: 8:20-8:29 UT
. . . .
Pierre Martin . . * . * . .
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Ottawa Valley Observers Group . . . . . .
Visual meteor observer . . . . -* .
Ottawa, Ontario, CAN . . . . .
home: p.martin@cyberusdot ca / . . . .
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Graphic Designer . | .
National Aviation Museum | \
work: pmartin@nmstcdot ca * . \
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