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Re: (meteorobs) Re: meteorobs-digest V3 #243

       Bob Young could well be onto something, but I am personally not
convinced.
I have floaters, they are darn aggravating at times, but when is the one
time I am not bothered by them?...when I am observing, i.e., staring at
a dark, but not truely black sky.
     I can only speak for myself.  My floaters are not black.  They are
a light semi-transparent gray.  And no  matter how fast I jiggle my
eyes, I can't make them move at meteoric speed --well, maybe a slow
meteor!
     As I've mentioned earlier this year, I have only seen black meteors
when I was really fatigued.  I  saw them after the second all-nighter of
the '98 Leonids, one or two, anyway.  I have been careful this year to
get naps before I go out, and after over 200 hrs logged this year, not a
single dark meteor has been observed.
     As for watching meteors in a planterium, just let it stay cloudy
here long enough...I'd probably be dying to join you, Bob!
Kim Youmans

YoungBob2@aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 12/20/1999 2:21:29 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> owner-meteorobs-digest@jovian.com writes:
> You wrote:
>
> << As strange and naive as this may sound, I've also seen a
>  nebulous meteor - not really a worm meteor, but a meteor
>  with a clear central condensation and a coma or an outer
>  envelope of some sort. That one was a sporadic grazer 3.
>  magnitude that covered some 70 degrees in 4 seconds.
>
>  Clear skies!
>
>  Jure A. >>
>
> I once was puzzled about nebulous meteors. I had seen
> these but has ignored them thinking that they were eye
> "floaters".   Then, one day between planetarium shows
> just out of curiosity I turned the sky way down to a dark
> sky and all lights off, and made sure that the meteor
> project was off, too, let my eyes dark adept and -- Holy
> Cow!  I saw them.  About 1 every 15 minutes or so, just
> about the frequency I saw them outside.  It seemed that
> they were more frequent if I stood up and moved around,
> then sat down and looked up.
>
> The giveaway was that I thought I detected a hint of pink
> to one over to the right.  Then I noticed that over to the
> right was the red "exit" light, still on.  I turned it off.  In
> fact, I then turned off all lights and sat in total darkness
> and saw no "nebulous" meteors.
>
> My conclusion is that these are reflections or refractions
> of starlight or other light in floaters.  They took on, for
> me, the forms reported by others: blobs or arcs.
>
> I also have noticed when I do real observing a class of
> very faint (~+6 mag) and very fast and short meteors.
> Since these are often in the periphery, I tended to ignore
> them because I wasn't sure.  In the Planetarium I also
> see them, and also in total darkness.
>
> My conclusion was that amorphous meteors are
> related to floaters, while the very dim fast ones are
> related to the eye, perhaps noise.  They aren't
> common and the latter are not noticed unless I am
> in really dark skies, <5 mag.
>
> I guess that very few people would be stupid enough
> to try to observe meteors in the planetarium!
>
> Clear skies,
> Bob Young
> State Museum of Pennsylvania
> Planetarium
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