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(meteorobs) Aug 12/13 Perseids in Austin, TX
From: Joseph Poirier <peartree@tivoli.com>
Hello!
Greetings from Austin TX! I am new to this list (just joined
2 days ago), but I see lots of useful info here already!
I observed from an air park runway (that is not used at night)
about 30 miles west of Austin TX, south of Lake Travis. Night
was phenomenal, clear skies, barely perceptible haze, but a
fairly strong southern wind (great for keeping away bugs, but
not good when using telescopes). The actual location is the
Austin Air Park, if anyone cares.
Arrived at 11:30 local time (CDT), watched meteors and looked
through the scope a friend brought (8" Celestron), eventually
settled down around 1:30 to do some counts.
Three of us observed from 1:35 AM to 2:35 AM CDT (Fri morn)
and counted 44 meteors collectively. They seemed to come in
clumps of 4-5, but I would need a tape recorder to scientifically
validate that hypothesis. We then observed from 2:40 AM to
3:10 AM and counted 24 collectively.
Several fireballs (> -3.0 Mag, right?) were observed. The best
had about a 7-sec. long trail.
Limiting magnitude was somewhere around 5.0 I think. I'll bring
better charts next time. I only printed the Ursa Major lim mag
chart from the NAMN website to determine LM, and it was a bit too
low on the horizon to be useful for accuracy.
With the Celestron, got good views of M31, M13, Jupiter, Saturn
in the Celestron, and the Pleiades through a small refractor.
Bad seeing with all the wind, though.
All in all, I counted around 100 meteors from 11:30 to 3:10 AM.
It was one of the better Perseid shows that I can remember, and
better than last year, but doesn't even come close to the
Leonids from Nov, 1998.
Next time (Leonids this Nov), learning from this forum, I'll try
to get much more scientific data.
Joseph
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