[meteorite-list] Perseids? + satellites

From: Kerns, John Space Systems <John.Kerns_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:52:14 2004
Message-ID: <5FB3100BDF2ACF4CAD2D821FB148267A01E1CF6E_at_AZU-MSX02.ssd.es.northgrum.com>

I attempted to post this yesterday, but I forgot to include the List in the
recipients.
 
The Perseid shower appeared to be diminished this year, but I certainly
would not call it a bust. I saw many Perseids during a two hour period on
both Sunday and Monday night from our astronomy club's observing site 10
miles northeast of Mt Palomar. I did not try to keep a count of the number
that I saw, but I would estimate that the number varied from 10-20 to over
40 per hour. My friend Dave was counting them Sunday night and he observed
close to 20 in a 40 minute period. These numbers would probably be even
greater if I had an unobstructed view of the entire horizon and if I was
able to keep my eyes open. I know that I nodded of several times Monday
night. When I started to observe them last night (2AM Tuesday morning), I
saw 6 Perseids and two sporadics in a 1 minute period. The meteors appeared
to cluster, seeing several in a couple of minutes and then nothing for
minutes at at time. I did not witness any spectacular events, but several
of the meteors were brighter than 0 magnitude. On Monday night I attempted
to observe the trails of the bright meteors in a pair of binoculars, but I
was successful only once on a Perseid in the North shortly before I went to
bed. The trail persisted for about 30 seconds in the binoculars after the
visual sighting of the meteor and its trail. I saw many short Perseids that
originated very close to the radiant.
 
As for the post from last night inquiring about seeing satellites, the
exists a very good web site that predicts satellite predictions for your
location. Go to
 
    http://www.heavens-above.com/ <http://www.heavens-above.com/>
 
and enter your location information. The site will give you predictions for
satellite crossings, occurrences for Iridium flashes, and other interesting
information. The satellite predictions are only for objects in which the
ephemeris is made public. No military or classified satellite predictions
are included. I would say that at least half of the satellites the I
usually see are not contained in the listing. Anyway, to answer the persons
question, observing 20 satellites in a three hour period it not uncommon as
long as you are in a dark sky location and looking up.
 
John Kerns

        -----Original Message-----
From: Sharkkb8_at_aol.com [mailto:Sharkkb8@aol.com]
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 11:17 PM
To: meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com
Subject: [meteorite-list] Perseids?




The list used to receive dozens of Perseid-reports by this point in the
evening of Aug 12.....can we assume that it's not much of a show this year,
last night or tonight? I'm about to head out north of the Neon Desert (Las
Vegas) but can only assume that the lack of discussion suggests that it
won't be stellar...no pun intended....;-)

Gregory
Received on Wed 14 Aug 2002 06:37:45 PM PDT