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Re: (meteorobs) FW: It's that time of year again...



   David is correct.  Fireballs are not rare, just rarely seen by the
average person.  They occur multiple times somewhere on earth everyday.
 The statement "its that time of year again" stems partly (implicitly, at
the least) if not primarily from the fact that it is now summer in the
northern hemisphere.  It's warm, vacation time, and more people are outside
after dark so there just going to be more reports of fireballs.

>>In 59 years I had never seen one and a good
>>deal of my time has been spent backpacking.

  If you've spent a lot of time camping AND watching the sky I'm shocked
you haven't witnessed a fireball until this year.

  You could probably hit a home-run and see a third fireball in a few weeks
if your able to commit to a multi-hour
observing session for the Perseid's peak.   The bright moon this year
shouldn't affect fireball visibility a whit, though perhaps making it
slightly less spectacular (unless it passed near the Moon/Mars conjunction
or something!!)   My experience is that you can expect to see at least one
Perseid of magnitude -3 or greater, sometimes more.  But not always.  I have
had one or two years with no fireballs at all!  Make sure you observe after
midnight until dawn if possible.

Kim Y.


Original Message -----
From: "David Stine" <DStine@exposquare.com>
To: <meteorobs@atmob.org>
Cc: <mirage@gilanet.com>
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2003 3:21 PM
Subject: RE: (meteorobs) FW: It's that time of year again...


I think that the definition of rare should be explained.  Rare to the
meteor group would be only happens once a decade or so, now rare to the
non observing public would be it happens once a month or so.  Fireballs
or Bolides are fairly common occurrence when you place them in
perspective.  A fireball like you saw happens somewhere in the world
every night, but it may go unnoticed if no one is looking,so yes it's a
rare experience for somebody sitting in their lawnchair outside their
house to see one not actually looking for one, but if you continually go
out and look for bolides your odds increase of seeing one to the point
where to an observer like the members it doesn't fall into the rare
category. I hope I explained this members.  Jump in if you have any
comments.  Also I can say that even though a bolide or fireball is not
rare, it still brings out the emotion in all of us when we see one and
we envy the person that sees something like you did.

Comet-1
David Stine

-----Original Message-----
From: Jill and Nevyn [mailto:mirage@gilanet.com]
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2003 1:53 PM
To: meteorobs@atmob.org
Subject: Re: (meteorobs) FW: It's that time of year again...

Well now this is getting really odd.  From my limited experience and
knowledge I was under the impression that fire balls were somewhat of a
rare
sight for the average person.  In 59 years I had never seen one and a
good
deal of my time has been spent backpacking.  Of course the natural past
time
for a backpacker is to watch the night sky.  Then along comes two of
them
on the same general course within 37 days of each other and I am lucky
enough to see both of them.  Given my curiosity about such events I did
do a
little investigation.  It seems that there is a confusion among the
general
population as to the difference between a fire ball and a plain old
vanilla
meteor (shooting star as some of us village idiots call it).  Now fire
balls
have been seen and reported, and made for much conversation and
speculations
on the old Art Bell show.  It sort of gave the impression that these
objects
were in fact rare.  Of course that was hardly a show of science and the
participants, unlike the astute individuals on this forum, were just of
average intelligence and didn't have all the professed skill as
participants
of this forum.

Now here I am writing to many scientific types , who seem to be saying
that
these things during certain times of the year are as common as dirt.
How
odd that in all my years outside I seem to have missed all that dirt.
Kind
of makes you wonder what this is all about.  And it sort of makes me
wonder
if my pronunciation of 'astute' as applied to some scientific types
should
be modified into two distinct sounds.

Nevyn

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