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(meteorobs) Some Unusual obs.

Rob,

       Ed Cannon is an old timer at SeeSat (see satellites) and is a
knowledgable contributer there like you are at meteorobs, so he'll 
know a satellite when he sees them, besides, with the many eyes, 
programs and lists of satellites, they sledom get stumped at SeeSat
by an unidentified for long with the network they have.

     As for the Sprite, it was about 3 degrees long and 2 1/2 degrees
high. They flash far above large thunderstorm masses like the kind we 
can get on the tip of Baja to Hawaii storm track. I've only seen one, 
but I saw it, maybe a big storm swung north and was a few hundred 
miles out to sea, that would have been perfect for viewing Sprites.
Now that I think of it, I did check the weather map and a storm was 
out there in the Pacific, far over the horizon, that would account for 
the 25 degree height, which is low indicating the storm was far away.

       The book I obtained the information in cited observations 
dating back to 1890 by Denning who "observed 635 (telescopic meteors) 
during 727 hour's sweeping." Is this a light pollution problem again 
for the low rates today? Denning used a 10-inch reflector. "Alcock 
recorded 201 between April 1 and October 11, 1964, using 25X105 and 
11X80 binoculars, which brought his total since the beginning of 1953 
to 1,698." Muirden goes on and writes about the joys of seeing 
satellites now and space junk during observation sessions. His book 
was first published in 1968 when "at the end of August and the end of 
September are active telescopically, with a number of faint streams, 
many of which have probably not yet been identified." He writes about 
a telescopic stream that occurs on 11 Dec "near the star 11 Canis 
Minoris."    

     One good aspect of my question, George Kelley let us know of a 
potencial source for more infomation from Dr. Olivier if people are 
interested in telescopic meteors but it would be nice to have more 
information about Dr. Olivier if someone wanted to contact him.

                             Dave English

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