A quote from http://www.saao.ac.za/assa/html/come...lar2005-2.html

"The Southern Taurids in November are part of a complex set of ecliptic showers which starts with the Southern Arietids, Northern and Southern Piscids, moving to the Northern and Southern Taurids, and then the Northern and Southern chi Orionids in December. This complex was described in detail in the April 2005 issue of the IMO journal WGN, and appears to be related to comet Encke as well as several minor planetary parents. This complex has its highest rates (about 5/hr) at the time of the Southern Taurids, but in reality there is probably no real defined maximum, and the peak rate probably 'floats' along the activity profile from year to year. Observation over several nights with plotting of all members is essential. Bright members and fireballs are common."

Tony Donnangelo, Tom Bakowski, and I saw many Southern Taurids during our 5 night stay at New Mexico Skies (see http://nmskies.com/index.html for further information). On at least 3 occasions, fireballs bright enough to light up the ground occurred. One happened on Tuesday night but I had my back to it, unfortunately. On Wednesday night, two extremely bright fireballs occurred within 45 seconds of each other. One traveled from Orion to the horizon; the second blazed in the northeast and produced a long-lasting train.

Dave Mitsky

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De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

There's more on the Southern Taurid fireballs at http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...fireballs.html

Dave Mitsky

__________________
Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

There have been reports in Germany, too, The appearance of this fireballs is leading people to speculate about UFO's from alien origin.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe...eut/index.html

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In a debunking mood? Check this site: http://www.sherdog.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=54

You will always find conspiracies there. Open an account and expose them. But careful, they may call you a 'government sheep".

Is there any unusual celestial phenomenon that UFO types don't link to ETs, I wonder?

Dave Mitsky

__________________
Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

There were hundreds visible, many fireballs, on Nov 4 from Northern California during the 4.5 hour period from 7pm to 11:30pm. Probably lots more after that too, but that's when I stopped watching.

Got home about 4:00 this morning and as I was getting my stuff out of the car, the sky behind me lit up! After unloading the car, I leaned back against it to watch the sky. My view is a strip of sky about 30 degrees wide from north to south, between trees to the east and west. During the next 15 minutes, I saw 5 meteors. The first (and faintest) was either a sporadic or an early Leonid. Next was a faint one (2nd or 3rd mag) in Ursa Major. Next was a bright one also in U. Major. It took about 2 seconds to traverse UM and was about -2 mag at its brightest. The next one was the most interesting, a "point source" meteor! I was looking at one of the open clusters in Auriga, when a "star" appeared about 40% of the way between Aldebaran and El Nath. Over the course of about 2 seconds, it brightened to slightly brighter than Aldebaran and then winked out. As far as I could tell, it didn't move at all. It just got brighter until it went out. The last one was the brightest, but I just caught it out of the corner of my eye, since it was waaaay south (about 10-15 degrees above the southern horizon. It was easily -4 mag or brighter. I wish I had been looking that way!

The references I've found say 5-10 faint meteors/hour for the Taurids in an average year, although one did say that more (and brighter) could be possible this year. If I can see 4 in 15 minutes in a fairly narrow strip of sky, I would say that they are probably right! I don't work tonight, so I plan on putting in a lot more time tomorrow morning!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

clouds cloads cloads and school tommorow that one night there was no clowds

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If this writing is blue you're going too fast!

Ditto!!
Clouds rolled in around 10:30, just as the Moon was setting! It's a conspiracy, I tell you!

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson