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Re: (meteorobs) Lousy Perseids!



 
To Chris:

Sorry I didn't get back to you on the Sunriver Project.  My
personal email to you bounced, and I was away at the Oregon
Star Party.  I couldn't join you at Sunriver anyway because
I had to work this morning.

To everyone:

I've observed Perseids for the last 4 nights now (crossing
my fingers as it's looking good for a 5th!).  It's a little
early to make a definitive statement on the Perseids for the
year, as the predicted time of maximum hasn't even passed as
I write this email! 

I'll post a summary of my observations separately, but this 
morning (8/12) I observed from Chiloquin, Oregon (42.6N, 
121.9W) for 1.5 hours between 9:50 and 11:23 UT.  There is 
quite a bit of smoke in the air, but it cleared somewhat
this morning and is looking even better now.  I managed to
get a mean LM of 6.4, and saw 58 Perseids and only 10 
sporadics.  Perseids seemed of normal brightness; I didn't 
get any fireballs but mean magnitude was 2.1 which may even 
be a little bright for the LM.  I calculated a ZHR of 51 
using r=2.5.  This seems a little low, but not out of 
bounds historically, and jibes with Mike Linnolt's Hawaii 
observation.

On the other hand, in LM=5.5 skies with inexperienced 
observers, 10-12 Perseids/hour may not be all that 
inconsistent with my observations either.

--
Wes Stone
Chiloquin, OR
http://skytour.homestead.com

-------------------------------
Chris Crawford wrote:

...

My group
>of four observers in Southern Oregon saw about 10 - 12 Perseids per hour
>during the two hours from Aug 12 10:00 UT to 12:00 UT. This is one of the
>worst Perseid years I have seen in my 38 years of watching them. 

...

I
>haven't yet carried out the detailed analysis, but it's safe to say that
>during our observing period, the Perseids were much weaker than we would
>have expected.



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