[Chaos-l] Summary: geminids last night

[Stewart-Taylor, Jon]

Hi all.  The Geminids put on a pretty good show last night.  When i
arrived at ECRA at 8:45, they were already producing a meteor every
couple of minutes.  Turnout was fairly high, as we had two high-school
science and astronomy classes, as well as the assorted general public.
Conditions varied from mediocre to good for the next two hours, and the
Geminids kept coming.   

   I didn't keep count, since i'd volunteered for constellation tour and
basically did little else from 9:00 to 10:30, but it was fairly common
to have meteors appear in the constellation i was laser-pointing out.
There were a high proportion of bright meteors, including several
fireballs, and one or two left glowing trains for a second or two.  

   Around 11:00 pretty much everyone had left and the clouds were
thickening, so i moved on to Farrington.  From about 11:20 to 12:30 the
clouds waxed and waned, and the Geminids came in clumps.  There'd be an
outburst of 3-5 meteors within a minute, and then there'd be 5-10
minutes with nothing.  By 12:30ish i was starting to doze, so i packed
up and went home.

   The Geminids are a mixed blessing.  In many ways, they're the most
accessible meteor shower of the year: they have a high ZHR and the
radiant is in good position early in the evening.  On the other hand,
they're in mid December, which here in the northern hemisphere makes the
weather chancy.  Last night was relatively mild with decent sky
conditions, and i appreciated the show.

J.
-- 
Jon Stewart-Taylor: joncst at earthlink.net; 919-967-2912	
Chapel Hill Astronomy: http://rtpnet.org/chaos/	
Light pollution information: http://www.ncdarksky.org/



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