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Re: (meteorobs) Reminiscences of Novembers past
>Europe should have low Leonid rates this year, so observers who will stay
>here will be able to look for the possible radiants.
>
>Jure
Okay, I have been sitting on this for a year, so I will add another
area where meteors may be emanating from around the time of Leonid
maximum.
When I flew on the Leonid MAC mission in 1999, my job was to
basically monitor one of the light intensified cameras and count
meteors. We had a simple system in place in that we used a computer
mouse and basically clicked one button if we saw a Leonid and the
other button if we saw a sporadic. We observed for four total nights,
although the first, that of November 13-14, was purely a test run to
get used to the equipment and I am not sure that tapes are still
available for this night. My camera on this night was pointing right
at the lower half of Orion. I observed for several hours and got very
comfortable with the trajectory of Leonids. They generally came from
the upper left corner of the field of view and the rate was about 4-5
per hour. I also detected several nice Taurids that generally came
staight down from the top of the field of view. A number of sporadics
were also seen. Interestingly, somewhere about the middle of the
session, I realized there were several meteors coming from the upper
right side of the display. These meteors were quite different from
the Leonids and Taurids I was seeing in that they were very
short-trailed. Because of their apparent length I concluded they were
coming from the Eridanus region. More were seen later in the session
and I was convinced of an active region in Eridanus. I was seeing 1-3
per hour in my 20-degree-wide field of view before twilight began.
None of the meteors were brilliant and since our limiting magnitude
through the light intensified cameras was near 9, I concluded most of
the meteors were below naked-eye visibility.
I was looking forward to detecting more meteors from this region on
the three main mission nights, but my camera was pointing northward
on those nights. Although I had noted the likely trajectory of
"Eridanids", nothing was seen. Following the mission, we were
provided with tapes made on the primary mission night because Peter
Jenniskens needed accurate "per minute" counts. I was quite happy to
see that my tapes were from the camera pointing southward, which
frequently included the southern half of Orion and Canis Major.
During the last year I have viewed most of these tapes in slow motion
in order to plot paths. Nothing was seen coming from the Eridanus
region.
So, for what its worth, this is my story. We now have several things
to keep ourselves busy both before and during the 2001 Leonid display.
Gary
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