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(meteorobs) Results: alpha-Triangulids (radio)
I drove to Waubaushene (Ontario) late last night to try and get away from
the congested FM band in Toronto
and do some meteor detection on the radio. Waubaushene is on Georgian Bay
just off Hwy 400 about 150 km north of Toronto.
The listening was spectacular. And so was the sky. Perfectly clear night
and I could see the Milky Way. The
water in the little harbour (where the locals launch their boats, I guess)
was so calm that I could see the
reflection of the Big Dipper. So it was an opportunity to do some
simultaneous visual and radio observing.
Although I didn't see much activity in the sky.
The main purpose of the trip was to determine if there are enough clear
frequencies in the FM band to do
some serious meteor detection experiments. As it turns out there are and
since Waubaushene is within
reasonable driving distance of Toronto, it is probably worthwhile.
Although I listened for several hours, I only tabulated bursts for one
hour. The remainder of the time was
spent scanning the band to list clear frequencies and watching the sky for
meteors. Most of my listening was
done on 94.7 MHz (all of the tabulated meteors were heard on this
frequency) with some listening on 89.3,
97.1 and 101.5 MHz.
I was able to identify WICI in Sumter, SC (a rare instance of actually
hearing the station ID) and an amazing
catch since the station's ERP is only 2600 watts. Also identified was CHEY
in Trois-Rivières, Québec (by
process of elimination since it is a French station).
During the hourlong listening session, I heard 377 meteors! That's about 6
meteor bursts per minute.: Since this was a temporary, portable test, I
used the car's FM radio to hear all of this.
I should point out that the meteors heard were undoubtedly not all
alpha-Triangulids. But I decided to take advantage of the shower to run the
test.
The following listing lists the meteor bursts in 5-minute intervals.
Listening start time was 0410 UTC.
0410 23
0415 21
0420 35
0425 24
0430 50
0435 32
0440 34
0445 25
0450 22
0455 42
0500 30
0505 38
Phil Gebhardt
pgebhardt@compuserve.com
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