by Richard Ozer
After compulsively checking the satellite images, clear sky clocks, weather pages, a ouiga board and a two headed coin, I decided to stick with my original plan and head up to Montebello.
When I arrived at 5:00 with Rebecca, may daughter, I found a half dozen or so people already hanging out waiting for dark. Eric Ayres was there doing the "I" thing as were a number of new people whom I didn't recognize. One gadget I immediately fell for was a reclining observing chair mounted on a rotating azimuth table with a pair of binoculars attached to a bar that swings in front of the observers face. This thing was fun! Point it straight up and spin around. Another great weird idea that only an amateur astronomer could appreciate (I wonder what it would be like w/ an altitude mount as well).
I brought my 10" DOB to do non-meteor observing as I waited for early morning to arrive. However, we were experiencing 90-95% humidity at a relatively high dew point. I decide to keep my eypieces and telrad in the bag and point the scope horizontal for a while. The sky was fairly cloudy, but I had convinced myself that it would clear by 10:00 and didn't get discouraged.
At 9:00 or so, the weather turned to our favor, the sky cleared from horizon to horizon and the temperature dropped to a chilly 36 degrees.
My first target was the current comet linear in Perseus. Someone tell me... is this comet on its way in or on its way out? If it is on its way in, does the fact that it is a comet linear 2000 designation imply that it was discovered on its way in a year ago? If so, that's pretty impressive! It was particularly big and bright. It showed up as a mag 7 fuzz ball with a well defined core. I enjoy looking at comets almost more than anything else, so that was a real treat. At that point, I had counted 3 leonids and was convinced that the evening would be another Leonid dud.
I wasn't planning on any serious observing because I thought my brother would show up and I would spend time showing him winter favorites. He wimped out, so I looked at the double cluster, the Andromeda galaxy, a few doubles and of course Saturn and Jupiter. I would describe the seeing as variable; moments of clarity but mostly on the soft side. I usually guage seeing by racking out the focuser on a star and seeing how bad the ripples there are in the diffraction pattern. There was a fair amount of atmospheric wobble going on (even though there wasn't really obvious twinkling) and I really couldn't get beyond 200x for the evening.
Things were getting kind of dull by 11:00; not much in the way of meteors. So, Richard Crisp decided to liven things up by running over Eric Ayres' foot with his Porsche... that woke everyone up! Darn good thing none of that equipment was damaged or we never would hear the end of it. Apparently no permanent damage was done, as the foot has 26 bones, leaving plenty to spare.
Well, after that things began to pick up. Page Mill road became an extension of the 880 freeway. I've never seen so many cars winding their way up to the ridge. We became gate-keepers and greeters, doing our best to limit auto access to the lot. There was a rowdy crowd out on the road, but no one was out of line and the only accident was the abovementioned one.
Now, I usually am not excited about meteors. But, last night's storm was nothing less than spectacular. The radiant was clearly defined, unlike other meteor showers I've seen in the past. The volume was unbelievable and the occasional burster made for quite a show. The peak from my perspective seemed to stretch from 2:00 to almost 3:30. Also, I noticed different regions of the sky would get different amounts of activity at different times. One 10 minute period had alot of activity in Orion, the next in Auriga, the next shooting North directly from Leo. Did anyone else notice this kind of thing, or did I imagine it?
Well, I'm glad it wasn't the third dud in a row and I hope everyone was able to catch some of the show.