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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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