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(meteorobs) Meteor observation May 4: what ETAs?



Hi!

  After a long pause, I was finally under the stars again. A cold front passed 
in the afternoon, bringing strong winds and clearing up the atmosphere. 
Transparency was superb and I decided to observe Eta Aquarid activity in the 
morning. I got up just past two in the morning and twenty minutes later I was 
set up in my backyard. The sky was excellent: average LM6.4, which is almost as 
good as it gets from my backyard, the sky transparent right down to the 
horizon. I could actually see the star SAO 30593 in Draco's head, which is 
mv=6.61 most of the time. Scorpio is hugging the horizon from this latitude and 
the lower stars are frequently washed out by haze. But this morning the entire 
constellation was just screaming for attention. Milky way was very nice.
  I started at 2:20LT (00:20UT), some 15 minutes before ETA radiant rise, 
facing northeast towards Cygnus. A major -7 Iridium flare lit up the southeast 
at 2:41:16 LT. Contrary to my expectations, the activity from ETAs was low. No, 
it was nonexistent. The first hour passed with no ETAs. There was a nice slow 
+1.5 orange SAG at 2:45 in UMi, trailing a short red wake and sparks. The first 
hour produced 11 meteors, which is quite good. I hoped for more ETA activity 
during the second hour, but *none* appeared. Hey, it's May 4th, two days until 
maximum?! 11 meteors appeared during the second hour. None really noteworthy.
  I spotted some unusual activity from a radiant at 19h15m, +43°31', with four 
definite swift members and three more possible members (I didn't see them well 
enough). The Eta Lyrids?

The summary:
Period		LM	F	teff		SAG	ETA	Spor
00:20-01:20UT	6.39	1.15	0.96		1	0	10
01:20-02:10UT	6.37	1.15	0.80		0	0	12

Magnitude distribution:
SAG:	+1(0.5) +2(0.5)
Spor:	+1(0.5) +2(5.5) +3(5) +4(3.5) +5(7) +6(0.5)

Average magnitude of the sporadics was +3.57.

Clear skies!
Jure A.

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