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(meteorobs) Last night - meteors galore!!

Hi all,

I'm glad to read the sidewalk session was a success!!

Last night (Dec 12/13), after much debating where I would go, I 
finally decided to go to the Beckwith site.  I was already late and I 
felt it would be a bit more clear and maybe less foggy than Cobden, 
which is a longer drive.

When I first arrived at Beckwith just after midnight, it was 
completely overcast!  The sky was full of strato-cumulus and could 
barely even see Jupiter.  But I waited out, and eating chocolate 
chunk cookies passed the time.  It was a pleasant and quiet night, 
and out in the distance I could hear a cow "mooing".  By the way, the 
Beckwith site is still completely accessible and not even any snow on 
all the paved surfaces.  At about 12:30am, a magnitude -4 Geminid was 
seen right THROUGH the clouds!!  A few more brief meteors were seen 
going in thinner parts of the clouds.

Finally, shortly before 1:00am the slowly started to improve.  More 
stars were visible.  Still poor transparency (mag +3.0 limit) but I 
casually counted about 15 meteors until 1:30am.

At 2:00am, the sky cleared completely and was quite decent!!  I 
immediately got the camera installed on tripod, and "signed-on" to 
begin recording the activity.  The sky stayed clear until 4:00am with 
limiting magnitude about 6.2.  Could see the winter Milky Way quite 
easily.  The fog became quite thick overnight but other than the 
horizons, it didn't cause too much problems.

The two hours produced some very memorable meteors!  Those Geminids 
are just gorgeous meteors!!  Anytime I would see one even just 
moderately bright (like mag +1), I would find myself "ooooooh!"ing. 
There was lots of vividly colored meteors, some electric blues, 
greens and yellows.  I don't know how many I saw yet, but there was 
certainly enough activity to keep me wide awake.  I found it 
interesting that many meteors went by at the very limit of the 
periphery of my vision (those ones I didn't count).

Now for the highlight of the night...

Just as I was looking down to fill-up my cup with hot chocolate, I 
saw the whole ground lit-up in a brilliant "double-flash"!!!  I look 
up and high in the south I see the brilliant train of ionization left 
over from an exploded fireball!  It must have been a sporadic in the 
magnitude -8 range!!  Wow!!!!!!  I screamed loudly and heard my echo 
out in the distance.  Just as I was looking at the train twisting and 
distorting over the next several seconds, *ANOTHER* fireball plunges 
in the south!  This time a magnitude -4 Geminid with a vivid blue 
tint!!  Both meteors were seen only 8 seconds apart.

When the clouds/fog came back at 4:00am, I packed my stuff and went 
to sleep in the car for a few hours.  My head was pounding a bit so I 
guess I was getting tired.

All in all, a very enjoyable session - only wished the clear window 
lasted longer!  Full report to come soon.

- Pierre

















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