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(meteorobs) Halloween Meteors
Hi List,
I thought I'd share with you the fun time I had observing meteors last night,
deep in a forest on Halloween night... this is my first real posting so
forgive my rambling style, I'm a writer and get carried away sometimes!
Still, this List seems a little more tolerant of longer, more personal
postings, so here goes...
Last night I was wearing my "astronomy expert" hat (I should maybe point out
here that I run my town's astronomical society (( www.http://subnet.virtual-
pc.com/gr537450 )) and write kids books about spaceflight and astronomy, and
do a lot of astronomy Outreach work in schools in my area) for a sky-watching
event at a visitor centre deep in a forest, way, way away from any lights.
Together with a handful of forest rangers I took a group of 30 people, of all
ages, on a trek through the woods, following a winding, twisting trail
toward a wide open clearing which I'd been assured had a magnificent view of
the sky. As we set off around 8.10UT, our torch beams cutting through the
darkness so we looked like a line of X-Files extras, I heard someone shout
out in surprise, and turned to see a lovely magnitude 0 blue meteor falling
from Perseus. Good start! I thought to myself as we entered the forest...
When we emerged from the trees once more it was like entering a planetarium:
walking out from under the frost-covered branches we entered a wide clearing,
and instead of looking up at the undersides of trees we were suddenly
standing under a dome of glittering, sparkling stars. The sky was a deep,
glacial blue, painted with feathered streaks of pearly-white clouds, lit by
the beautiful, almost-Full Moon which was blazing over tall fir trees to the
south east. The Moon was framed between two planets: Jupiter was a
spectacular sight, shining just a finger's width away on the right, and
Saturn was glowing sublimely a hand's length away on the left. I turned
around slowly... the Plough was scraping the northern horizon... the Summer
Triangle was jabbing into the peaks of the western hills... it was
perfect...!
Over the next 90mins I showed everyone - including a couple of kids bravely
dressed as vampires and ghosts! - various sights through my trusty 3" Tasco
reflector. The Moon was breathtaking, and dazzlinglybright in the frosty
air... Jupiter's cloud belts stood out very clearly, and Callisto and Europa
were both easy to see... of course, everyone was stunned by their first sight
of Saturn's rings, it's something you never forget, isn't it? A couple of
people half-jokingly asked "Okay... where's the picture hidden?", but the
look in their eyes was something wonderful to see...!
But one of the main reasons for the sky-watch was to let people know about
the forthcoming Leonids, and I distributed information sheets giving them all
the details. There's a great deal of excitement over here in the UK about the
Leonids, but people like me are having a VERY hard time warning people not
to expect too much, especially in the aftermath of the crushingly-
disappointing Giacobinids; our media spent the whole day telling people what
they WOULD see that evening, and of course in the end nothing happened, and
if you listened very carefully you could actually hear the Ghost of Kohoutek
laughing... Now the papers are full of accounts of how worried NASA and
aerospace companies are about the damage their orbiting hardware might
suffer, and people are expecting the sky to fall... it's not easy asking
people to calm down when we're so excited ourselves, but we *are* trying...!
Anyway, meteors... Over the 90mins we were there we saw three meteors. One
skipped away from the Pleiades at 21.05UT, flaring as it headed towards
Capella, and two others fell away from central Perseus, just a couple of
minutes apart around 20.50UT. Amazingly, to say that we live in a relatively
light pollution free part of the northern UK (the Sky Watch was held at
Whinlatter Forest, nr Keswick in the "Lake District National Park" in
Cumbria, if you're bored enough to look for it in your atlas!) these were the
first meteors some of the attendees had ever seen, and their delighted gasps
were proof of their wonder. I hope they get to see plenty of Leonids later
this month...! Almost all of those people who had seen shooting stars before
had seen them "in the summer", suggesting that they'd seen Perseids. I heard
several accounts of how people trekked up hills or drove out into the
countryside to watch "the shooting stars"...
After trekking back through the forest I showed the group some specimens from
my modest meteorite collection, and they were amazed to be able to hold some
real "star-stones", including a Canyon Diablo from Meteor Crater, a small
Holbrook whole stone and my beautiful Moldavite. My tiny bits of Zagami dust
went down well, too! All in all, I am pretty sure everyone went away
satisfied.
My astronomical society is holding a Leonid Watch on the evening of the 17th,
and if people are interested to hear how it goes I'll post a report on the
List.
Again, my apologies if this hasn't been very informative or scientific, but I
thought it might give you a glimpse into what's going on over here in a tiny
corner of the UK.
Regards,
Stuart Atkinson,
Secretary, Cockermouth Astronomical Society, UK.
P.S. On a slightly different subject... has anyone ever calculated which
meteor showers - if any - future martian colonists will be able to see? Will
they have annual showers to look forward to, as we do? IT may be a really
dumb question, but I'd really like to know so I can work it into the kids SF
novel I'm currently writing. Thanks in advance! - Stu
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