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(meteorobs) Observation July 14/15 2001



Last night (July 14/15) I decided to go out for a last minute 
observation at the Casselman site, located east of Ottawa. The sky 
appeared crystal clear from my home, despite forecasts calling for 
variable clouds and chance of showers. When I got to Casselman near 
11:30pm (local EDT), there was a blanket of low clouds from the 
north. A magn -8 iridium flare at 11:35pm was missed due to a fairly 
thick cloud in that direction. I noticed a patch of clear skies low 
over the north-west so I decided to wait, go for a nap inside my car 
and set my alarm for half an hour. I woke-up at about 12:15, and the 
sky was clearing up quickly! Behind the clouds the sky was very 
clear, so I setup quickly into my lawnchair to do a "sign-on".

The area of the sky near zenith was wonderful! It was was one of 
those rare nights at Casselman where I had no problem seeing 6.4 mag 
stars and even an occasional 6.5 near the zenith. The Milky Way had 
lots of structure. Soon the sky was at least 90% clear. Almost 
immediately, I saw a swift third magnitude meteor shoot into the 
Summer Triangle. I plotted it, and suspect it might be an early 
Perseid candidate.

Then, I took out my Celestron Ultima 9x63 binos and aimed at an area 
to the right of the square of Pegasus. It took only 2 seconds to get 
comet LINEAR!!! Wow!!!!! That is one VERY nice little comet! It's the 
first time I get to see it, and I was fairly impressed. It looked 
diffuse - almost like a bright nebula. The short tail was fairly 
obvious. Knowing the exact position, I then realized it was a 
relatively easy naked eye object! Without any optical aid, there was 
definitely a small fuzzy patch there that reminded me of M31. This 
comet must be a fine sight through larger instruments, but I enjoyed 
what I saw in the binoculars.

After watching the comet, I resumed meteor observing (and I'm VERY 
glad I did)...

At exactly 4:55UT (12:55 EDT), the southern sky suddenly lit-up from 
the glare of a most impressive, exploding magnitude -6 fireball!!! 
The bright flash even lit up the ground for a brief moment. It was 
almost pure white, and moved swiftly straight down into central 
Capricornus. The pencil-thin vaporous-looking train left behind was 
brilliant, bluish and persisted for 25 seconds. As it faded, I 
immediately took out my 9x63 binoculars and found the fading meteor 
train. It was no longer visible to the eye alone, but very easy in 
the binos. The glowing train slowly twisted and zig-zagged into an 
"S" shape. It drifted very slowly. Eventually, as several minutes 
went by, the train went completely horizontal and eventually split 
into two parts. Amazingly, I was able to track the ghostly-looking 
fireball train in my binos for over 13 minutes before it faded from 
view!!! That's one of the longest lasting trains I've ever seen! I 
will prepare a fireball report to FIDAC. I believe this was most 
likely a sporadic fireball.

Not long after that, the sky became overcast with more clouds moving 
in. Because the session was cut short, I won't have an official 
meteor report this time - but talk about luck :-) ...

... getting a brief good transparency, a nice comet and a brilliant 
fireball made the brief session well worth it.

Clear skies,

Pierre

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