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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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