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(meteorobs) Observations May 9/10: tons of meteors, faint + ETA grazers
Hi!
It was clear here for the whole night so I did an allnighter. With only
6 hours of darknes here at this time of the year, allnighters aren't that
difficult :) The sky was very transparent so the LM's were good, even
before the moon set!
The numbers of meteors were OK, although during some periods a bit
on the weak side. There were several periods of up to 15 to 20 minutes
when the meteors just refused to appear, despite the good LM. The first
hour was very strong, with 14 sporadics and 1 MVI. The others did OK,
with totals between 9 and 14. I suscpect I was getting a bit tired during
the last two periods as I felt I wasn't as concentrated as I usually am...
...especially the last hour. Either it was me or the meteors went almost
completely dead.
The average magnitude... ...now that's a different story! Out of 72
meteors I saw, *not a single one* came above +1.0!!! I can't remember
when that last happened to me. There were tons of +1's and +2's but
not a single 0 or or brighter.
The best meteors included TWO ETA grazers. The radiant rose at
2:50 local here, the first ETA appeared 2:59 local, a 40 degrees long
+2.5 meteor that left a 1 second train. Two minutes later a +5 ETA
appeared in Cygnus, in the count area 14, then seconds after a
superb 70 degrees long +1.5 ETA going from the center of Hercules
past beta UMi. It was almost 3 seconds in duration and left a very
nice 3 second train. Another good meteor appeared at 1:05 local in
Bootes, a +1.0 magnitude sporadic point meteor. I know it was
a meteor because it left a train. These were the best meteors, but the
majority was in the +3 to +5 range, just get a load of the magnitude
distribution, the average magnitude is a faint +3.37.
The summary:
Period F teff Lm SPO SAG MVI ABO ETA TOT
20:00-21:00UT 1.00 0.94 6.36 14 0 1 0 - 15
21:00-22:00UT 1.00 0.96 6.43 9 1 0 0 - 9
22:00-23:00UT 1.00 0.97 6.50 9 2 0 0 - 12
23:00-00:00UT 1.00 0.96 6.56 13 0 0 0 - 13
00:00-01:00UT 1.00 0.95 6.53 12 1 0 0 1 14
01:00-02:00UT 1.00 0.98 6.38 6 0 0 0 3 9
5.76 63 4 1 0 4 72
Magnitude distribution:
SPO: +1(6) +2(10) +3(18.5) +4(13) +5(14.5) +6(1)
SAG: +3(1) +4(2.5) +5(0.5)
MVI: +4(1)
ETA: +1(0.5) +2(1) +3(0.5) +5(2)
It's still clear, so perhaps I'll try again for a couple of hours in the
morning.
Clear skies!!
Jure A.
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