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(meteorobs) Somewhat unusual telescopic obs.
Ed Cannon,
Nice to see you over here from SeeSat. You and your friend may
have seen a Sprite, they are observed from 20-+300 miles away. I
believe I saw one once, probably from the storm track between Baja
and Hawaii. It was pale white, large and had an even slanting top and
a ragged bottom. It was SSW of my location, over the ocean.
If you want to read about them, couple of good sites are:
http://www.heldref.org/ww/97aslyons.html
That's by Walter Lyons, a three page article that appeared in
"Weatherwise" magazine, gives some basic background of Sprites. This
next website looks at Elves:
http://ritz.otago.ac.nz/space/darwin97/
Also their press release could be read.
I had been considering posting a question about telescopic
meteors, they require hard work but could be almost a single reporter
per observed session. I see that Nick Martin reported, "a beautiful
almost saphire blue meteor crossed the field of view," on 4 January
this year, he was using a 20" Dobsonian with a 9 mm eyepiece.
The question I wanted to ask was, is anyone regularly reporting
on telescopic meteors? How are they different than naked eye meteors?
"The Amateur Astronomer's Handbook" devotes a page to them and
describes some of them as "many seem to move relatively slowly," with
no apparent good explanation because their speed would indicate a
height too high to ignite a meteor, and Muirden seemed to question if
the answer would be that all of the slow meteors would be directed at
the observer to cause the perceived slowness. Looks like a good field
to investigate.
Dave English
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