Observing Notesfrom the Tuckahoe IrregularsI was set up for stargazing at Tuckahoe State Park by 7:30 pm, and enjoyed some fantastic views of Jupiter, Saturn, M31, M1, and the Orion nebula through my own telescope and others. I sought out M33, M74 and M77 as the last three M-objects I need in order to complete my Messier list. Though I found them, the seeing was so poor that they were all simply smudges in my C-8, and I elected to wait until a clearer night to officially log them. By 10:30, occasional precursor meteors were beginning to herald the coming show. Doug Norton and I watched a slow-moving grazing metor that started above the trees to the northeast and crossed the zenith, disappearing near Orion (I think) about four seconds later. However, ground fog that would ebb and flow and general low temperatures were beginning to hamper other stellar observations. Radiation cooling of the black shrouds around some off the larger Dobsonian telescopes had coated them with actual ice (not frost). The way my feet felt, I suspect that my shoes looked the same. :-) As I live only 25 minutes from Tuckahoe, I elected to go home at about 11:30 and grab a couple of hours' sleep, then return with my wife near 3 am. My drive home was punctuated by two more precursor meteors, bright enough to see out the windshield even through heavy mist lit by high beams. The drive back was even better. We saw at least five or six bright meteors, again despite the concealing glow of illuminated mist. The ball field at Tuckahoe was deep in ground fog when we arrived about 3:30. The sky was only visible in a cone beginning about 20 degrees above the horizon, but it was clearer the closer to vertical one looked. There was a bright meteor occurring every couple of minutes as we settled into our lawn chairs near Paul Gray to watch the show. Paul was audibly counting meteors in his field of vision and once reached over 80 in 15 minutes, but I was looking in a slightly different direction and witnessed some that he did not. There seemed to be a number of them in the vicinity of Orion. A full-circle view of the sky might have produced a count of close to 110-120 meteors in that same 15-minute period, but I suppose that's not the way it's done officially. As the night went on the fog grew thicker and deeper. The low trees at the edge of the ball field disappeared, and only the tops of the tallest trees pierced the white lake we were swimming in. The only visible stars in Ursa Major were the ones of the Dipper itself; everything else was lost in the milk. It was pretty much the same across the whole sky. Jupiter, high and bright, showed a distinct halo just before the approaching dawn. And yet the meteors kept coming. It was obvious that their radiant was in Leo: 90% of all the streaks I saw began or could be traced back to a point in or near the reversed question mark of stars that is (to me) that constellation's most noticeable feature. The forty or more people who were sharing the field obviously loved the display (especially Don). The oooo's and aaahhh's could have been taken from any earthbound fireworks show I've ever witnessed. Though we did not reach the predicted 1+ meteors per second, this late-night show was still fantastic. I had expected a sky with myriad small streaks, but I was struck by the high percentage of bright fireballs that left pale glowing tracks of varying length and duration. This particular celestial sandstorm must have had some pretty coarse sand! Often meteors outside my field of vision were made evident by bright flashes of light against the ground and the vehicles and trailers parked around the ball field. Bright fireballs near the horizon lit the intervening fog from behind, like embedded lightning in a thunderstorm. We were still able to see many high fireballs well into the early twilight. I began brushing the thick frost off my equipment about 5:30 and left the park a little after 6. I had brought my Canon to attempt to catch some meteor trails, but due to the extreme moisture I elected to keep it in its case. I hope some of you other shutterbugs got some good shots! Steve Long |