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Re: (meteorobs) Corvids

On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 02:51:59PM +0200, Szilard Csizmadia wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> can somebody send some information to me about Corvids? I heard that they
> were formed after an asteroid impact into the Moon in 1178. Is this
> correct? What is your opinion? My last question is as follows. The Corvids
> was discovered by Hoffmeister in 1937; was any Corvid meteor observed
> since 1937?

I don't know if the story of the Canterbury Monks seeing an impact on the
Moon in 1178 is true or not, but it may be a myth that the supposed impact
event created the lunar crater Bruno. As you probably know, Giordano Bruno 
was a romantic Italian philosopher and priest who lectured that the Sun was 
a star, and that other stars probably have planets with people (beings) on 
them too. For this, he was burned at the stake by the Catholic church in 1600! 
He certainly deserved to have a lunar crated named after him. Anyway, I heard 
or read somewhere that this particular crater was not fresh enough to be the
result of this event. However, that doesn't rule out that another smaller and 
yet to be identified crater didn't result from this impact, whenever it might
have happened, and that it may have made the Corvid Meteor Shower. Of course, 
an entirely different event may have made this meteor shower too.

Other than the Cuno Hoffmeister reference of a shower in 1937. In 1992 there
was a researcher, whos name escapes me, who predicted a possible encounter
with this stream in 1992. I went out looking and probably saw a couple Corvids
June 28, 1992 from 04:00 to 04:30 UT. They were reported in the Summer 1992 
issue of Meteor News (#98), the publication of the American Meteor Society, 
but of these observations, Peter Brown later mentioned to me that only two 
meteors seen is statistically insignificant. This may be so, but they were the
slowest meteors that I have ever seen. Being grazers, they both had very long 
trails, and one even skipped on the upper atmosphere like a flat rock thrown 
across water. 

GWG
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