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Re: (meteorobs) telescopic meteor?
On Thu, 6 Apr 2000, Dave Hostetter wrote:
> I've got a question for observers of telescopic meteors.
Don't you mean observer? (-:
> I just got a call from one of our local deep sky observers. He's
> fairly experienced, and was using a 13 inch Dob with a 32 mm ocular
> for what he saw last night at about 12:36 AM (5:36 UTC, April 6).
So at a guess that's about 50x magnification and field of view of a
degrees. Thus an angular speed of half a degree per second. While I
have seen meteors that slow (close to the radiant), it's akin to
satellite speeds. Even at low altitude it would be a huge structure.
A small percentage of telescopic meteors look diffuse (few arc minutes)
to me. 5--8'' is at the extreme end and much rarer. Putting these low
probability events together, I'd say it was extremely unlikely to be a
meteor. Like Dave and Lew, my money would be on a member of the Aves
class.
I have indeed seen bigger grey objects. With the wider field of view
there's more time to realise that it's some bird. A wide range of
speeds are possible given that the creature could be anything from
a few metres away (and of course way out of focus) to thousands.
I myself have never seen any cratered transients.
How about some small asteroid just missing us? (-:
Malcolm
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