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(meteorobs) Observation June 2/3 2002
Last night, I had a very nice early morning meteor session under
crisp clear skies. I viewed with the company of several other fellow
amateur astronomers at the Casselman site, located south-east of
Ottawa. The sky was quite a bit more transparent than it was last
Friday night due to a cooler and dryer air mass. I started with an
average limiting magnitude of 6.45. The faint bulge of the Milky Way
into Ophiuchus was easily visible (which is fairly rare at
Casselman), and Cygnus appeared buried in many stars. For the second
hour, my magnitude count went down a bit due to the rising Quarter
Moon in the east.
Meteor rates again seemed quite normal with 11 meteors recorded
within two hours of observing time. This session came very close to
having *only* sporadic meteors... until I saw a swift moving meteor
from the north apex source well into my second hour.
The highlight for this session was to see a persistent train from a
bright sporadic fireball (that I happened to miss). The train lasted
several seconds in the south-western sky before fading away.
It an enjoyable session...
Pierre Martin
Ottawa, Ontario
DATE: June 2/3 2002
BEGIN: 0445 UT (0045 EDT) END: 0647 UT (0247 EDT)
OBSERVER: Pierre Martin (MARPI)
LOCATION: Long: -75.063 West; Lat: 45.269 North Elevation:50m
City & Province: Casselman, Ontario, CANADA
RECORDING METHOD: talking clock/tape recorder
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
OBSERVED SHOWERS:_______________________________________radiant position
SAG (Sagittarids antihelion source)_____1748 -23
SW3 (Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 activity?)__1420 +36
OSC (Omega Scorpids)____________________1556 -20
napx (north apex sporadics)_____________
SPO (random sporadics)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
OBSERVING PERIODS: 0 = none seen; / = shower not observed
PERIOD(UT)__FIELD____Teff__LM____SPO_SAG_OSC_SW3_napx
0445-0547___1714+14__1.00__6.45__7___0___0___0___0
0547-0647___1859+15__1.00__6.30__3___0___0___0___1
TOTALS:______________2.00________10__0___0___0___1
The first column (Period UT) refers to observing periods broken down
as close as possible to one hour of true observing, in Universal
Time. The second column (Field) is the area in in the sky where I
centered my field of view. The third column (TEFF) represents
effective observing time (corrected for breaks or any time I did not
spent looking at the sky). One hour = 1.00 teff. The fourth column
(LM) is the average naked eye limitimg magnitude, determined by
triangle star counts. All following columns indicate the number of
meteors for each shower observed.
MAGNITUDE DISTRIBUTIONS:
SHOWER
SPO: +1(1) +2(1) +3(5) +4(2) +5(2) AVE: +3.27
Note: Magnitude scale is to determine the brightness of sky objects.
Magnitude -8 is comparable to a quarter moon, magnitude -4 with the
planet Venus, magnitude -1 with the brightest star Sirius, magnitude
+2 to +3 with most average naked eye stars and magnitude +6 to +7 are
the faintest stars the naked eye can see under typical dark
conditions. A meteor of at least magnitude -3 is considered a
fireball. The above table contains the magnitudes from all observed
meteors, and the average (last column) for showers.
SKY OBSCURED:
None
------------------------
Dead time: 2 minutes (for plots)
Breaks (UT): None
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