Thanks to Mark Wagner for passing on the message about Dr. Peter's Perseid observing campaign at Fremont Peak. I went and had a great time! We could have used more skilled people. I did not see anyone else from TAC.

There were plenty of counters - they needed to tally the total number of meteors during a given 15 minute period. I guess something had been printed in the newspaper so there were plenty of people who were willing and skilled enough for that job.

They also needed plotters - they needed to mark the position of the meteor correctly on the sky map (nine pages!) and indicate the exact Universal Time and Magnitude. At first Dave wasn't sure if I was skilled enough for this position, but he was coming to the realization that I was all he had. (There was one other plotter, but she kept falling asleep!) Then I pointed out Mercury to him and he was impressed enough to let me in! Thanks to Mark (Taylor?) for teaching me that!

I had the moon and the Teapot setting to my right, and the Queen and Persius rising to my left. We were only allowed to plot meteors of magnitude +1 or brighter. I plotted 71 meteors from 11pm to 3am. But for every one I plotted, there were another 4 that I didn't plot either because they were too dim or I was to slow. (I did get a lot better with those nine pages of star plots as the night / morning wore on.) I saw only a total of 8 that were of magnitude -4 or -5. Jupiter is -3 so those were brighter than Jupiter. Most of those bright ones came between 2:30 and 3:00 am.

They had a fancy (but cheap) set up of cameras to photograph the meteors. The cameras were all positioned in a circle and left open. If there was a meteor they would quickly advance the film. There was a fan rotating above the cameras so the meteor track would be broken up by the blades passing by at a known speed. They would use this to judge velocity.

Dr. Peter wanted the manual plots to compare with the photos.

They had the observatory open. I finally did see the GRS!!! I was extremely excited!

The other big event of the evening was a -5 meteor with a trail that lasted maybe 10 or 15 seconds. The wind blew the trail a little so it made a neat shape. I was very excited about this too.

Even my closest TAC friends would have been impressed with my enthusiasm.

Thanks again for passing on the info!