I sat in my backyard smack in the center of the Salt Lake Valley, from midnight until just past 2 AM. I kept nodding-off, but I did mange to see 12 shower members and 2 sporadics, including one "point" meteor coming from near the NCP. I could see all the stars in the little dipper. Brightest Perseid was about mag 1, and had a path next to Jupiter. This was not the Perseids best year, at least for the time I was out there. Nice night, though. I had my late father's old 8x40 Wide Field Bushnell binocular and took in a objects such as the Double Cluster, M32, M33, etc. This binocular has the largest eyepieces I have ever seen on a binocular and is perfect for astronomy. Cast aluminum housing, some 40+ years old; they just don't make them like this anymore. Dad used to use them at UofU football games all those years ago. I was also amazed at the large number of nocturnally-flying birds! I followed a couple in the binocular and they had the wing planform of owls. There were also two small flocks of about half a dozen birds that appeared to be pigeons or doves. Bats were out in force, as usual. On 8/13/10, Canopus56 <canopus56@yahoo.com> wrote:
Watched at the Mirror Lake Highway day-pass dispensing parking lot in the Uintahs between 1:00AM-2:45 MST 8-13-2010. Watched one steradian centered on Mirfak (alf Per). Temp a refreshing 39F. ZLM est. 5.8; cloudless transparent sky. Double cluster and 0.5 deg of M31 naked eye; dark lanes of Milky Way from Cygnus to Per easily seen in great detail.
1:00AM-2:00AM 26 total, mostly mag 3.5 to 2.0; 4 mag 2.0 to mag. 1.5, typically 5 to 10 deg smokey white or smokey green tails. 6 sporadics. Mirfak at about 30 deg alt. Shower is clumpy but gave good impression of the "flashlight" stream effect. For "clumpiness", typically a bright meteor would be seen low on the horizon over Colorado, then a second one to the immmediate west of the observing point, followed by a clump of brighter meteors centered on the radiant.
2:00-2:30AM 7 total; 3 sporadics.
2:30AM-2:45AM 0.
3:20-3:30AM 10 with 3 sporadics. Mirfak at about 35-40 deg alt. After packing up and while driving back towards SLC at about 5 km north of the Kamas and Heber freeway interchange, stopped and watched from 3:20 to 3:25 in response to bright meteor seen through windshield. Saw outburst of 10 meteors, inclusive of 3 sporadics. Then nothing from 3:25 to 3:30am.
4:15-4:45AM 0. Back at SLC under urban light polluted sky with Per near its maximum per dawn altitude around 45-50 deg alt.
Overall Perseids impression: The last two seasons have been fairly average - not like three seasons ago when there was an inspiring show of long and low streamers in short 1/2 hour burst between 11:30pm to 12:15pm MST. Definitely a nice show tonight though. Worth the drive.
It was a nice night under pristine Unitah skies. Great to experience "cold" again, having forgotten it this summer.
If anyone has any other reports on the 11:30am to 1:00am time frame - which I did not observe this season - I'd like to hear them.
Kim wrote:
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I was also pretty sure that I saw three or four Delta Aquariids during a short observing session Wednesday night, around 11:30, and since the peak of this shower typically occurs July 29/30 I'm not sure what to make of what I saw both Wednesday and last night. Did anyone else see any Aquariids this week?
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This season, the delta Aqr's had a good strong peak around 8/4. In terms of radio reflections, not visual observing, the del Aqr's had a higher peak than the Perseids.
Most of the sporadics that I saw this week (8-10 to 8-13) ran through Aries and Triangulum running on a line celestial east-west. The radiant back traces generally were celestial west-to-east, but I did not necessarily associate them with the Aqr region. I did not have any strong feelings about whether these sproadics were trailing del Aqr members or just part of the general summer antehelion stream.
Kim, you may find these of the major meteor showers interesting:
http://sonotaco.jp/img/SN_SWR2009A.png
http://sonotaco.jp/img/SN_ALL2009A.png
from http://sonotaco.jp/
see also http://sonotaco.com/e_index.html
Clear Skies - Kurt
P.S. - Concluded that meteor video camera with 160deg TFOV did not have sufficient sensitivity and will be converting it to a 60 deg TFOV lens in order to get more limiting magnitude reach.
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