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(meteorobs) Waubaushene Results
Last Saturday morning I had a very successful listening session in
Waubaushene (Ontario, Canada).
The sky was relatively clear--although there must have been some haze since
I couldn't see the Milky Way as I normally can on a very clear night there.
According to the astronomy program on my computer, the limiting magnitude
that morning was about 4.
Part of Saturday morning's activity was to determine if it is possible to
see and hear a meteor simultaneously. The seemingly obvious answer is: Of
course you can. However, in previous tests, radar has been used with a
single transmit/receive site, not simple FM antennas and separate transmit
and receive sites. During the listening period, the radio count was 153
meteors or a rate of 127 per hour. Part of the reason for the high count
may have been the upcoming Orionid meteor shower due to peak the following
Thursday morning. With such a high rate, it is possible to recognize
meteors that reflect a particular station. For example, I heard several
bursts which contained snipits of the same song.
Despite the high radio count and the relatively clear sky, I saw only two
meteors visually. One was definitely an Orionid; the other was of
questionable origin--possibly a sporadic. Neither of these meteors provided
a radio burst for me--a disappointing result.
I used the same setup as I mentioned in my message about last weekend: a
small yagi pointed directly upwards toward the zenith feeding a pair of
10-dB r.f. amplifiers and then the receiver. The yagi was mounted on my
homemade 4-metre (12-ft.) mast.
The project will continue in future weeks to see what the results
eventually reveal.
Phil Gebhardt
Stouffville, Ontario, Canada
pgebhardt@compuserve.com
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