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(meteorobs) Leonids from San Diego, Caif: formal report
Greetings,
As promised.. here is my
full report and visual data from Leonid obs on what was
predicted to be the second peak night of 2003... we arrived to the mountain
site (one of the sites from where Bob Lunsford and I usually view..
Bob, however chose to drive out to
the desert). . The Mount Laguna area is ~45-50 miles east of San
Diego at an elevation of 5000 feet.. The whole area is referred to as
the Cleveland National Forest.. and this was much of the recent scene of
the CEDAR Fire that burned 280,000+ acres, 2,000+ homes,
and killed 20 people. The Firestorm's fileline came 4 miles
from my apartment complex.. (Yes, I had my boxes
of pics/papers readied, along with my CPU, ready to
evacuate!) . Obviously it was hard to
see, driving up at night, all of the fire
damage . I have seen the area by
day... the black scorch marks (on the pavement) on Interstate-8
where the Cedar Firestorm jumped 8-lanes of highway.. that, my friends
is scary stuff indeed
The psychological effects of living
thru this tragedy, notwithstanding, we went to observe meteors! To be
sure, our site was still suffering some transperancy problems due to the
fires-effects and aftereffects... We saw NO enhanced meteor activity,
but It WAS a night of of great fun ..Even with the leftoover ash.. the Milky Way
was clearly visible.. LMs are typically better on clear nights like
last night
(~6.1-6.4)... but I estimated the ash
caused only a slight loss of mag.. down to 5.4-5.7 . When the
moon came up later in the morning.. there was a notable drop in mag to about an
Lm 5.0-5.3. We left shortly after that
We watched casually from 1030-1130pm
local time. (I didnt start recoring data until 1130pm PST local
time). During that time we caught a -4
orange fragmenting sporadic fireball.. in the south sky traveling
easterly, it had a 20-25 deg path length, was distinctly orange-ish in
color .. It did not display a terminal burst, but 3 fragments broke of
towards the end.. a displayed a beautiful and seemingly quite
thick wake, no persistent train. The Taurids were a
welcome sight.. My first officialy records meteor was a beautiful 0 mag
white Taurid.. lasting a good 3 seconds.. love these slow
travellers... The other highlight was the -5 LEO... terminal burst to
probabaly about -8. it left a train that lasted for over 3 minutes.. we watched as the train
snaked,. twisted and turned in the high atmosphere.. reminding my of the Great
Leonid Fireball Fest.. and all those trains..
Over all.. a very satisfying night of
meteor observring.. below are my data tables..
I lolok forward to reading Bob's
reports form the high desert...
Clear skies,
Joseph Assmus
San Diego, CA
DATE: Nov 19,
2003
BEGIN: 0730 UT END: 1115
UT
OBSERVER: Joseph Assmus
FACING: NE, looking up about
60-80deg
LOCATION: Mount Laguna, 32 Deg 50' 00" N, 116 Deg 38'
13", Elev ~5000 ft
City & State: SanDiego, California
RECORDING METHOD:
Pencil & Paper
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Time
[UT] Lm
Teff LEO TAU
SPO Total
0730-0830_______5.70____0.98____0_______1_______10_______11
0830-0930_______5.70____0.97___10_______0________8_______18
0930-1030_______5.70____0.96___16_______3________7_______28
1030-1115_______5.30____0.73____9_______1________6_______16
Total
3.64___35_______5_______31_______71
Magnitude Distribution
Shower
-6_____-5_____-4_____-3_____-2_____-1______0______1______2______3______4______5______6_____Total
LEO
0______1______0______0______0______0______1______2______2_____12______6______1______0_____35
TAU
0______0______0______0______0______0______1______0______1______2______1______0______0_____5
SPO 0______0______0______0______0______0______0______0______3_____12______8______8______0_____31
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