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(meteorobs) Casual observations June 6/7/02
Greetings all,
Thought I would check out pre-dawn visibility and any possible 'daytime
shower' meteors visible this morning, so got up just before 3.00 am local
time. Haven't been into much visual observing lately, but watched casually
out my bedroom window, and ran a series of photos using my 'window cam'...
My room faces a shade north of due east, and being out in the country, the
skies are quite decent. Earlier in the night, about 1.00 am, the skies had
still been a bit mushy, but by 3.00 am, had improved. Still not real crisp,
but decent. M31 was easily visible, though not spectacular. Set up my
Minolta SRT on the window sill... 55mm lens, f1.7, wide open, film to be
developed at asa 400 (using up some old P1600 from the fridge). Ran camera
starting at 3.42 am, through until 5.00 am, to just finish off the roll.
Continued to watch visually while running camera.... saw no meteors at all
during that time period. Field of view visually out my window covers up to
about 50 degrees from the horizon.
For curiosity, tried out a pair of medium yellow clip-on sunglasses over my
normal glasses. The yellow shades improved visibility a slight bit, making
the stars in the bright twilight easier to spot... especially if you turned
your head, then looked back and had to try to relocate the stars. Being
yellow, as opposed to a darker colour, such as orange, meant that you still
got quite a bit of light transmitted. With the yellow glasses, I was able
to see Capella low in the east, up to 35 minutes before actual sunrise. Any
meteors I might have seen would have had to be brighter than that though, in
order for my eyes to detect them!
As an aside here, once full daylight hits, I would expect that the darker
colour, such as orange, would be better. I drive with orange glasses a fair
bit, and apart from your brain taking about 5 minutes to adjust to them and
re-gear itself to recognize the sky as 'blue' and the grass as 'green'...
the orange really vamps up your perception. I remember back in January
1998, when I was visiting meteor observers in southern California... that
Bob Lunsford spotted Venus in broad daylight, while just casually walking
down the street. He was wearing darkish orange-brown glasses of some kind.
I couldn't see Venus at all.
Anyway... had a couple pleasant pre-dawn hours. Crescent moon was pretty
rising off to the right, and the sunrise was sort of a peachy pink, once I
took off the yellow shades ;>
Clear skies all,
Cathy Hall
Metcalfe, Ontario, Canada
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