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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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