[at-l] Re: The sky is falling! The sky is falling!...

[m2b@loa.com (Ryan Crawford)]

To say the least what a day Saturday into Sunday was.

I joined some of the members of the Monadnock Sunapee Greenway Trail Club
around noon time for a hike along the Greenway.  Great weather but it was
looking questionable for the shower overnight.  It was the first time I had
been up on Pitcher Mt. when the wind wasn't blowing.  I guess by talking to
everyone that it must almost typically have the same weather(windwise) as
Mt. Monadnock.

After the hike we all headed for the short drive to where the annual trail
club meeting was going to be held.  After the meeting I headed home seeing
clear blue skies that looked quite promising for the meteor shower.  I
headed to bed around 11:15PM and planned to wake up around 2AM.  I had been
hearing anywhere from 2-6AM as peak time for the shower.  It seemed like the
closer the shower got to happening the later the peak was to occur.  It was
just like the weather, on Tuesday or Wednesday this past week it was suppose
to in the mid 50's on Saturday.  By the time Saturday came it was only in
the low 40's.  Amazing how things change so rapidly.

I ended up waking up before the alarm went off and I got up and left for
Pitcher Mt to view the shower.  I knew that it had a 360 degree from the
top, a fire tower would help to block the wind if their was any, no lights
anywhere around except for some city lights off in the distance but nothing
close by, and yes, the skies were crystal clear.  I got to the top around
2:30AM and proceeded to lay out the Therma-Rest and sleeping bag.  Yes, the
wind had picked back up, unfortunately.  That was the only downfall to the
night.  I had the first 30-45 minutes all to myself.  I hadn't watched a
meteor shower in, oh, 12-15 years.  It was definitely a rather unusual
experience.

I saw many of the meteor in the early going coming from the Big and Little
Dipper area rather than from Leo.  I was beginning to think that they had
misnamed the shower and that it should be called Ursid Meteor Shower.
Toward sunrise they did shift more down toward Leo, though.  Mostly seeming
to be shooting down just to the west of the Boston area.

After about 45 minutes of watching a woman came walking up.  She said she
saw my car in the parking lot.  We both watched for about 45 minutes before
she left to head for her neighbors outdoor jacuzzi(sp?), what a way to watch
a meteor shower.  She left and about 10 minutes later a man came up and
stayed for about 5 minutes.  After about 10 minutes, somewhere around
4:30AM, the crowd started to emerge.  I would guess that about the peak
there were somewhere around 20-25 people up top.  I was the only one to
stick around all the way until sunrise.  Most left about twilight.  I still
wonder what the crowd up top of Mt. Monadnock was like.  I heard that their
was going to be a crowd going up there.  I'm surprised that Patches didn't
take the drive on Saturday up to Monadnock and stick around the shower.
That would be a nice place as well, but not as nice a night hike to get to
as what Pitcher Mt. is.  Pitcher is a little further away from the city glow
that you get coming up from Keene.  Some horizon hanging clouds made the
city glow quite unbelievable from Concord, Manchester, and Keene, if not
Nashua as well.  I didn't think you would be able to see much glow if any
from the bigger cities.  I thought they was too far away too really be able
to see much of the glow.  It was even stranger to watch the glow shrink as
twilight was progressing.

Around 4AM there was a small peak in the shower.  The real peak came
somewhere around 5-5:30, with as Patches said somewhere around at least one
a second, sometimes more.  I can remember trying to chase them all across
the SEastern sky they were coming so fast.  I was primarily only watching
the eastern sky and not the western sky.  I would guess that at 3000 per
hour at peak, most of the time it would have been at least 800 per hour from
2:30AM on until sunrise.  Again, that was just in one half of the sky.

The weather in western NH is knowing for being nothing but cloudy during
November.  November is traditionally the cloudiest month throughout the
year.  I remember wanting to watch it last year but the clouds were thicker
than, well....  I guess I can consider myself fortunate to have been able to
see them.  Hopefully, it won't be another 12-15 years before I go out to
watch another meteor shower.  At least I now know where to go to watch them.
Now if only the weather and the phase of the moon will cooperate than it
could make for another perfect opportunity, even though it more than likely
wouldn't be as intense.

The strange thing I noticed was the length of time that some of the
tails/"clouds" lasted after the meteor had burned up.  Being an amateur
radio, like a few others on the list, I know that during showers, like last
night, is a great time for trying to bounce radio signals off the meteor
trails.  I didn't realize until last night why sometimes a signal could be
heard for a minute or more.  Most times it doesn't last more than 10-15
seconds, quite often not that long.  I witnessed one meteor that the tail
was still visible 2-3 minutes after the meteor had disappeared.  It was the
only one like it, but several other lasted at least 30 seconds.

I never remember noticing anything like what Dave Hicks was mentioning.
Granted, it was something I was prepared to watch for.  Next time I'm going
to have to pay more attention, I might get lucky and notice it.  One
suggestion, considering what I saw last night, are you sure it wasn't two
meteors following each other, but the second one "wasn't visible".  I saw
many that two meteors were essentially in the same location just separated
by a short, sometimes very short, period of time.  I remember one of the
brightest ones was just above the cup on the Big Dipper.  Less than a minute
later another one on the same trajectory.  I saw several instances where one
and another followed behind each other within a second.  This could be part
of the answer to why they were doing what they were doing as well.

Ryan "MEANT 2B" Crawford
Sunapee, NH