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(meteorobs) Unexpected activity 10/18-19



I am classing this as a lousy meteor report, but I am curious as to 
what other observers may have seen on the night of October 18/19.

I was one of 15 people observing after our monthly astronomy club 
meeting last Saturday night, October 18. We were observing Mars, 
Uranus, Neptune, numerous deep sky objects, and C/2002 T7 and began 
around 8:30 p.m.

Around 8:45 p.m. (1:45 UT on October 19) I saw two relatively slow, 
long-trailed meteors moving roughly northward to southward within a 
few seconds of each other. The first cut through central Cygnus, 
while the second passed near the Cygnus-Pegasus border. Both meteors 
could have converged far to the north, but we were observing in my 
backyard and the northern sky below Polaris was blocked by my 2-story 
house. I made a comment and two other people said they also saw them. 
At 8:52 p.m. (1:52 UT) I was preparing to line up on M33 with my 
refractor, when I saw a very slow moving, reddish meteor that had the 
same flickering characteristic of the atmosphere grazing Leonids. I 
first caught this meteor 30-40 degrees above the northeastern horizon 
and watched it vanish maybe 10 degrees above the east-southeastern 
horizon. This meteor would also have come from a region in the far 
northern sky. I alerted the group and several of us paid closer 
attention to the sky in search of more meteors. We saw 5 more of 
these meteors by 9:30 (2:30 UT), as well as 3 non-related meteors. 
All of the remainder of these meteors were long-trailed, except for 
the non-related meteors. The magnitudes ranged from 1 to 4. We 
observed our planned objects for another 4 hours and several of us 
kept a lookout for more meteors when we could. We never saw another 
meteor that could have come from the far northern sky. We did catch a 
couple of Orionids very late in the session, as well as a couple of 
meteors from Pisces and Taurus. There were also 4 sporadics.

Right around 10 p.m. I wanted to try and plot some of the meteors 
from memory. The attempt was a disaster, as you can imagine. With 
such long-trailed meteors and 30 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes 
having elapsed, we got several convergences that ranged from the bowl 
of the Big Dipper to about 20 degrees above it. I am curious as to 
what other observers may have seen.

Sincerely,
Gary
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