Bright meteor 2011 Aug 27 01:28 UT
Kim, ever intrepid astronomer, got me outside when I was ready to pack it in for the day and am I ever glad we went outside.
Skies were clear after 21:00 edt with a little haze in the west.
No bugs. Some neighbour lighting but what can you do?
We rolled open the roof (I can still hear the *BANG* of the roof flying off and landing elsewhere 8 years ago in the storm!) and Kim started to setup Starbuck, the 20cm dobsonian to hunt for Comet C/2009 P1 Garadd.
We saw the 21:23 pass of ISS in the North, completely by accident and watched it disappearing into the shadow.
It was about 21:28 EDT and I was looking elsewhere when a flashbulb of light went off. I have trained myself not to stand not moving in shock and incredulity but rather to turn my head up at the speed of whiplash and managed to catch the last bits of what I am estimating a -10 meteor. -10 only because it was so much brighter than Jupiter or Venus but less than a full moon. Direction was SSE to NNW and I saw it over the bowl of the Big Dipper, mostly overhead but closer to 60 deg altitude.
It appeared white in colour (due to brightness no doubt), spreading across perhaps 20 degrees with no lasting trail.
It appeared to be coming from the Vega Summer triangle area.
Wow.
A little later Kim got Comet Garradd in the scope right next to M71. One of these days we will get some photographic ability hooked up. It was great. We watched it for about an hour trying to see it move. I did not see any detectable motion but I had a rought time trying to remember where it was the last time I looked 5 minutes back.
At 22:09 EDT we had a nice -1 Iridium flare, again completely be accident.
I packed it in but Kim stayed up comet watching some more…
oh. did I mention the allsky camera got the meteor? 🙂
