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(meteorobs) Re: Sprites & Telescopic Meteors

Dave,

Sprites are a possible, but remote possibility. If thunderstorms were 
in the general direction of the observation then that may lend more 
credence to this possibility.

Don't sprites travel in a straight upwards motion? If so, it would be 
interesting to see which direction Ed's objects were moving.

With regard to telescopic meteors, there telescopic observers in the 
International Meteor Organization. There have been a few articles on 
telescopic activity over the years in the IMO's journal WGN. 

AAVSO observers are also urged to record the number of telescopic 
meteors they witness while making magnitude estimates. I have never seen
any reports from the AAVSO pertaining to telescopic meteor activity.

Telescopic meteors differ from naked eye meteors only in the fact that 
they are dimmer (very profound statement here) and are of a smaller
size.
It has been calculated that your average 7th magnitude meteor has the
diameter of 1 millimeter. This is small, but still larger than the 
"perceived" grain of sand.

The telescopic meteors I have seen zip through the field in much less 
than a second. Any reports of slower objects (unless your field of view 
is huge) would probably indicate the sighting of a faint satellite. 

Clear Skies!

Bob Lunsford



Dave English wrote:

> 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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