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(meteorobs) High rates last night?
Early yesterday the forecast for
last night called for mostly clear skies here, so I made plans to get two
or three hours of observations in. I was out at my site by 3:15 local
time and saw two casual meteors before I could even sit back in my lawn chair to
get started. The sky was exceptionally clear and I had counted LM's of 6.3
within twenty minutes. The truely astonishing thing was the rates --
within the first thirty minutes of my watch I had seen 12 meteors in addition to
the two casual ones! That's a meteor every 2.5 minutes, on average.
Then, at around 3:53 am or so, the stars started winking out and within two
or three minutes the entire sky was clouded out!!! What luck --
I felt like a kid being kicked out of the candy store!
Interestingly, no fewer than six
of the meteors aligned with the DAU radiant, and at least two others *possibly*
aligned with the same radiant. The northern and southern apex sources
yielded three other meteors. Perhaps the possible DAU's were also from the
apex? I wouldn't have any other explanation and I was beginning to worry
about what to label these since DAU rates weren't supposed to be high this late
in their period. But alas, the clouds took care of that dilemma! I
didn't have enough TEFF for a full period.
Maybe this was just a random
thirty minute "outburst" or maybe the apex region was just very active last
night. I'm not bothering with an actual report but if anyone wants my data
reduced I'd be glad to do it.
Kim Youmans
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