Slashdot Mirror

In this sucking mud swamp of a debate, it is entirely possible to get completely opposite claims with lots of supporting data depending on which Google search terms you use to fortify your position.

Quote:

Numbers released today by NOAAâ(TM)s National Climatic Data Center show that not only has July been abnormally cool in the USA, but so has 2014 in general. For the last 30 days, there have been 574 record highest temperatures in the USA, and 1,726 record lowest. A ratio of 3 to 1, indicating that July was very cool. But, the year so far has also been cool.

So far for the USA year to date, the numbers of record lows outpace the highs two to one.

This year, here have been been 12,644 daily record lowest temperatures versus 6,615 record highest temperatures in the USA, a ratio of 1.91 to 1.0.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...

Remember the "Polar Vortex"? It was a cold damned Spring and Summer through 2014...

From Wikipedia:

The 2013-14 North American cold wave was an extreme weather event extending from December 2013 to April 2014, and was also part of an unusually cold winter affecting parts of Canada and the Eastern United States.[6] The event consisted of 2 episodes, the first one in December 2013 and the second in early 2014, both caused by southward shifts of the North Polar Vortex. Record cold temperatures also extended well into March.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...â"14_North_American_cold_wave

Though, of course, this is blamed on AGW once again. "The planet is warming up, which is why you're freezing your tail off. Obviously."

Back in the debate swamp, "True Believers" claim that the "Deniers" are funded by the petro-chem industry to fudge data. That may be true. Truthfully, I've not checked. I *have* however checked to see that the AGW side can be accused of similar things; their funding comes from those who would benefit from carbon tax scams. Driven by fear of unemployment and professional crucifixion, they engage in all sorts of funny business...

BOM finally explains! Cooling changed to warming trends because stations "might" have moved!
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/...

But the thing I find interesting is that, as per usual, *nobody* in the MSM or really anywhere in the debate is looking at or discussing the other parallel trends. We've seen massive increases in comet/fireball activity and volcanic activity

"If you plot data from the last 200 years, there's a clear increase in the number of eruptions over time," Siebert said, "but that's not a function of the actual number of eruptions but rather due to reporting effects."
http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/are-volcanic-eruptions-increasing.htm

-You'll notice that while the up-trend is beyond denial every official volcano news site in the first few Google page returns races to assure us that incidence of mountains blowing up are not *actually* on the increase. -It's simply that we have only recently become better at noticing when MOUNTAINS BLOW UP.

You'll excuse me if I find this to be a rather tenuous bit of self-calming very likely (my opinion) linked to the official media directives telling us that any of the bad CO2 must be due to human activities and certainly not any natural events. -Which, please note, is NOT why I bring up volcanoes.

CO2 doesn't interest me because nobody has yet put forth a viable explanation for why it would cause any significant net heat capture. CO2 works in both directions. CO2 is opaque to IR; like the clouds of Nuclear

Apologies: the link didn't get included in my "see here" bit. The actual link is at http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/faqf/#12

If the alternative histories of the world are any indicator, far more advanced civilizations than ours have fallen to the same fate.

Anyway, before we even worry about getting our space science up to snuff, we'd have to do something about the enormous problem of crazy people running our governments, banks and business.

If we can't even get that sorted out, then really, a planetary re-boot might be just what the doctor ordered.

It's coming awfully soon, too, if the various indicators are to be trusted.

Fireballs reported per year. Not the best measure, but a measure to make a thinking man stop and ponder:

2005 > 463
2006 > 517 (+54)
2007 > 588 (+71)
2008 > 726 (+138)
2009 > 694 (-32)
2010 > 951 (+257)
2011 > 1628 (+677)
2012 > 2216 (+588)
2013 > 116 by January 19

http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/fireball-report/

For meteor showers the statement "before dawn" is correct for virtually everyone, anywhere. The reason is simple: the Earth is rotating towards the forward motion of our orbital path and we tend to run into the most particles (meteors) at that time. Bugs on a windshield. You are right in bitching that in this case, the Perseid meteor shower is more visible for Norther Hemisphere observers. Not likely you'll see many down in Argentina.

I should note the best display of meteors is only going to happen when you are out at a dark rural location with an unobstructed horizon. Rarely do they tell you the forecast rates are for an ideal situation that few could possibly achieve. You will see less than 100 per hour but one meteor per minute is likely at peak and its pretty impressive to watch.

As to what part of the world will see it best does depend on your longitude, so it is related to your timezone. Good observation. The point of maximum meteor stream density, the peak of the meteor shower, can be narrow or wide. The Perseids are an old meteor shower seen for thousands of years and its peak is fairly broad, many hours. Therefor there is some latitude in your position.

The best source of information about meteor showers, including their predicted peak time, is going to be found on the International Meteor Organization (IMO) website. They have a "live" update running for major showers like the Perseids. Consult their yearly calendar for predicted 'peak' dates. Many yearly astronomical handbooks provide meteor shower information as well. [shameless plug] I wrote an iPhone app (Meteor Shower Guide) using IMO and American Meteor Society (AMS) data that calculates your peak time based on your phones timezone setting, and its in local time! No need to wait for someone to tell you about a meteor shower, it will add it to your iPhone's calendar if you like.

The question that always drives me crazy is when people ask "where do I look?". Just look up! If you go out to a dark site with a clear horizon you will see plenty of meteors during the Persied shower. You'd have to be asleep or looking at the ground to miss them. If its clear at your location Saturday night to Sunday morning get out and watch.

Actually, it *is* pretty well supported by the anecdotes. There have a been a few reports of hot meteorites (I'm not sure how many of those were later confirmed to BE meteorites, either; I've seen hot slag get confused with meteorites.), but also quite a few of warm or even frosty ones. Take, for example, the case where a ricochet struck a woman in the leg; I know of no reports adding that she was burned by the meteorite at the same time. Doesn't sound like an "extremely hot" rock to me. And the fact that there are NO known reports of fires being started by meteorites also suggests that your protestations are off base. (I notice that you provide no evidence or calculations to back up your rather definitive assertions, incidentally. Care to?)

Another link, if you're curious: http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball/faqf.html#9

And the author of that page, had you bothered to check, isn't an arm-chair astronomer. He's a PhD'ed astronomer and a well-known science advocate.

There is other information available.

For example, the date of the observation (7 November), and commentary in the article leads to the reasonable supposition that the observation was from a meteor in the Taurid stream http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/tauri ds.html. Since the Taurids are very well characterized, their orbital velocity is extremely well known, and thus the net impact velocity would be known with great precision, too. If it's one of the Taurids. Which is not so bad an assumption.

Even without the Taurid assumption, you can look at other data to put some bounds on the meteor velocities. For example, there are excellent "head echo" observations by some big radars:

Arecibo http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/acp/acp/4/947/acp-4- 947.pdf

Jicamarca http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/acp/acpd/3/6063/acpd -3-6063.pdf

and there have been several PhD dissertations in recent years exploring a variety of aspects of meteors, just from the plasma physics side (let alone the "meteor astronomy" side); check out Close and Dyrud from 2004 at BU, http://www.bu.edu/astronomy/alumni/phd.html.

The past decade has been a remarkably active time for meteor studies. There will be presentations about meteors at the URSI meeting in Boulder CO 4-7 Jan 2006, http://cires.colorado.edu/ursi/

Scary fireball thingy

Unfortunately there's no background objects visible so it's impossible to judge the scale

Don't worry if you miss this one, for Mother Nature has a Christmas present for you. The Ursids are next. They max out on December 22-23. It's not as strong as the Geminid shower, but hey, it's still better than nothing.

Well, from this website, you convert from UT to GMT by adding 0 hours. If there are technical niceties involved, they aren't relevant to the ordinary person.

While the shower goes on for several days, the peak, when we go through a filament of material, is August 12, 09:20 UT (what used to be Greenwich time). With daylight savings time, that will be 2:20am here in California.

Southern hemisphere won't see anything

Really? We've got the Pi-Puppids plus a circumpolar "bright" comet, C/2001 Q4 (NEAT).

Also, the Lyrids are not the first meteor shower of the year; the first of several showers before the Lyrids are the Quadrantids. Downunder, but not left out...

Southern hemisphere won't see anything

Really? We've got the Pi-Puppids plus a circumpolar "bright" comet, C/2001 Q4 (NEAT).

Also, the Lyrids are not the first meteor shower of the year; the first of several showers before the Lyrids are the Quadrantids. Downunder, but not left out...

Southern hemisphere won't see anything

Really? We've got the Pi-Puppids plus a circumpolar "bright" comet, C/2001 Q4 (NEAT).

Also, the Lyrids are not the first meteor shower of the year; the first of several showers before the Lyrids are the Quadrantids. Downunder, but not left out...

Well 5-20 is on the average to higher side as far as showers tend to go, but it's also important to point out that the meteor shower numbers are frequently misleading if you're not familiar with how they're calculated.

Normally that number refers to what you'd be expected to see if you're in a completely dark sky, able to see in all directions at once, and with the radiant directly overhead. Realistically this isn't normally what happens.

Most people live near a populated area, so they only see the brighter meteors. It's also unusual to be directly underneath the radiant, so some of the meteors (up to half) may be below the local horizon. Also, you can't look in all directions. People who observe meteor showers properly often work in groups, with each person assigned a particular area of the sky to keep watch on.

There are often exceptions and perhaps you'll get lucky, but don't be too surprised or disappointed if you only see one meteor every 10 or 20 minutes, or maybe less than that. Although the article states about 5-20, Gary Kronk's meteor page comments that there can be occasional bursts of up to 100. Don't get your hopes up too much though, or you'll end up disappointed.

80,000 km is not the closest. How about the Grand Teton Meteor of 1972? This one was seen in the US and Canada as a bright daylight fireball. It was very close - about 50 km - but did not hit. Instead, it burned through the atmosphere and went off back into space.

Then there's this one, which is believed to be a meteor that was put into Earth orbit on the first pass, then re-entered 100 minutes later after orbiting the Earth once.

It's a good idea to nip outside to see this one as it's unlikely we'll get much (if any) of a November leonids show this year.
Easy to find too, just look for the Pleiades if you can't find the proper radiant in Perseus. Mind you, if you live somewhere without a rainy season, just looking up should do fine.

Growing awareness... and from what I've seen, a growing tendency to announce them in news and on the web.

The same meteor showers happen about the same time every year. You can go out next year in mid-december and watch the Geminids all over again.

The only difference between them is their intensity. The Leonids, for example, has a 33-year cycle of peak activity, which is why the last two have been pretty intense.

I dug up this link with a small primer on meteor shower in general. There's probably much better ones out there.

The Leonid Meteor Shower are remnants of the comet Tempel-Tuttle. A perturbation by the planet Jupiter in 2029, will change the orbit of Tempel-Tuttle away from the Earth. You may have to wait until 2098, 2099 or 2131 to see the next Leonid storm.

StarrySkies, has some very cool images from last year's Leonid, star charts, folklore and more. Also see Near-Live Leonid Watching System, NASA Leonid Multi Instrument Aircraft Campaign and
Gart W. Kronk's Comets & Meteor Showers.

"It's quite astounding that we've seen two in two nights," said John Bally, an astrophysics professor at CU. "Sporadic fireballs are quite rare. Unless we're in a meteor storm, it's very uncommon."

I guess the reporter figured that mentioning that it was the peak of Draconids would take some of the fun out of the story. The last paragraph left me thinking it was very uncommon, not that it was actually slightly unusual.

The AMS has a FAQ on the subject which includes brightness info. It also points out that nickel tends to produce the green color.

Also, there probably is a correlation between your bus-waiting guy and these other sightings. If you're in the northern hemisphere...there is more darkness right now than a few weeks ago. Easier to see meteors.

The Ursids are next.

They max out on December 22-23.

Is there something particularly interesting about something that happens pretty much every year? Why didn't Slashdot report them last year? And why only these last two?

Here's the schedule, by the way.

To best observe the Leonids wear appropriate clothing for the weather. Lie outside in a reclining lawn chair with your feet pointing towards the east (the general direction of the radiant). Do not look directly at the radiant, but at the area above and around it. The Leonids can be observed into morning twilight. Other minor meteor showers will be going on at the time and stray meteors, more commonly called sporadics, will frequently be seen that do not belong to a meteor shower. When you see a meteor mentally trace it backwards and if you arrive at the "sickle" of Leo it is probably a Leonid.

To best observe the Leonids wear appropriate clothing for the weather. Lie outside in a reclining lawn chair with your feet pointing towards the east (the general direction of the radiant). Do not look directly at the radiant, but at the area above and around it. The Leonids can be observed into morning twilight. Other minor meteor showers will be going on at the time and stray meteors, more commonly called sporadics, will frequently be seen that do not belong to a meteor shower. When you see a meteor mentally trace it backwards and if you arrive at the "sickle" of Leo it is probably a Leonid.

• North American Meteor Network - NAFTA would like them.
• The American Meteor Society - Their homepage seems more organized.

American Meteor Society

Here's some facts about how to do if you want to look at this meteor shower. For those who really wants to read alot about this, here's an extensive guide to meteor showers and their observation. They are best wieved in the late evening. The peak for the meteor shower is calculated to be today (2001-10-09) but remember that the date of maximum is approximate, viewing is possible +/- 2 days of it. The radiant at maximum will be at 262 degrees, ie. RA 17h 28.2m, Dec +54, which is about 2 degrees north of the star beta Draconis, called Restaban, on the shortest side of the head of Draco. (Need a glossary or a star chart?) Anyway these are slow meteors, at about 20 km/sec, so they will be very distinctive - and much easier to catch on photographs!

If you don't wanna go out to look for the showers, you can always tune in to NASA's forward scatter meteor radar system at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. On a typical day, when there's no intense meteor shower, radar listeners will hear about one ping per minute or so. Rates could become substantially higher during a meteor shower.

Some recently updated graph of Giacobinids 2001 from observations shows unfortunately that they seem to be rather weak this year, just about 5-6 per hour :(. But thats not so surprising because the strength of the Draconid meteor shower has varied considerably over the years, reaching 'storm' level in 1933 and 1946 when thousands were seen and the sky looked like it was really falling! In Belgium in 1933, observers counted about 78 meteors per minute. Because of its variable nature - it's like playing on lottery when going out to observe this shower. Although chances of seeing any activity from this shower in a given year are minimal, one of these years you could be pleasantly surprised!

But there will be more meteor showers this month, for example the Orionids (October 21-22) which are predicted to be stronger than the Draconids (atleast compared with the observational data for the Draconids recently reported :). The Orionids are debris from Halley's Comet. Also the Leonids are coming now in November (18th) again, and this time it seems to be a big meteor shower. Actually, predictions by the world's top meteor experts expects it to be the most dramatic meteor shower in 35 years.

It would have been nice if the article had given more than a few hours' notice but it was not 24 hours out of date as was claimed.

-- SE

I like the Geminids around December 13. They are as plentiful as the Quadrantids, and their radiant, the point in the sky where the meteors appear to originate, is overhead before midnight. Most other showers (Lyrids included) are best viewed in the wee hours. My personal highest rate of meteors observed per hour was during a Geminid shower. Summer haze often messes up the Perseids for me.

Details about these and other showers are on Gary Kronk's meteor calendar.

Don't know what on Earth happened to the company since then (I think it was the same company anyway) but at the time there was much info on the web site about how it was used to do periodic downloads of results from many very remote automated data collectors, like atmospheric stations and so on. There was something about shipping too. But the data rate was extremely short, and it seemed only useful to communications that could be accomplished with a handful of bytes each signal.

I remember at the time worrying about security, since antennas and signals might draw fire from military on innocent villages etc. There still is hardly any phone infrastructure, and any really good solution (like the phone system in the sky one satellite company built for Thailand) seemed prey to a rapacious telecom ministry. Well that's a few years ago. I think I suggested more research into either a store and forward to satellites, or a line of site ham network using a specialized linux type distribution.

Anyway, I said "Amateur Scientist meteor radio" to Google and Google showed me some very nice links!

Meteorscatter Links--Make More Miles on VHF
A link on this page ( Meteor Burst Communication) mentions the noise floor is limited to the noise emitted by the galaxy, which changes through the day as you scan different parts of it. Cool! It says you really ought to be away from cities and highways to keep the floor as low as possible.

The American Meteor Society Radiometeor Project
(a reprint posted last summer of a 1997 article from the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers)

• call for observation
  
• 
  notes on tempel1 here and here
  
• 
  Interesting notes on deep impact
  
• 
  - Deep Impact FAQs
  
• 
  - paranoia link - suggests that the project's real, unpublished goal is to "miss" Tempel1 and intercept OX4, whose course with Earth in 2014, 2038, 2044 and 2046 is "possibly" an intercept.
  

here is a good link that tells you details on viewing the shower:
http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/quadr antids.html

very interesting reading on this particular shower can be fond here and here.

See also :
Leoniods 99 updates.
American Meteor Society


This is X/posted w/out permission (sorry Marc! )

\a


I N T E R N A T I O N A L M E T E O R O R G A N I Z A T I O N

1999 Leonids: Rapid Information Dissemination
=============================================

Dear meteor observer,

>From earlier communications, you have learned that the IMO is setting
up a communication network to obtain reliable information as soon as
possible after the event in the morning of November 18. We invite you
to contribute to this effort.

First of all, we want to point out you must DISTINGUISH between the
USUAL OBSERVATIONAL REPORTS, such as collected by the IMO's Visual
Commission, and which may be used for detailed, global analyses, and
the "EXPRESS REPORT" described below which serves as sole purpose the
compilation of a rough but reliable picture of the activity within
hours after the event.

The EXPRESS REPORT should have the following format:

Meteo R. Observer
Fireball City (45N 10E)

Time Interval (UT) Lim. Magn. Nr. of Leonids Remarks (if any)
------------------------------------------------ -----------------------
01:15-01:30 5.8 27 None
01:30-01:45 5.9 56 None
01:45-02:00 6.1 156 None
.
.
.

To the extent possible, bin your observations for this "express report"
in time interval of 15 MINUTES.

(Again, the full report of your observations will be different from
this express report, as shorter intervals are required as well as
magnitude distributions and some additional data - see the earlier
posted article with visual observing hints - but the above data
suffice for the purpose indicated.)

If you wish to collaborate with the IMO in this respect, please send
your express report for the night of November 17/18 ONLY (or, of course,
for any unexpected activity you might happen to witness)
*** IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE OBSERVATION *** to the following email
addresses:

wgn@imo.net
gyssens@hcoss.uia.ac.be

The latter is a back-up address in case Web-site access to www.imo.net
would prove to slow down our computer too much. This back-up address
will be active only on November 17 and 18!

Thank you in advance for any collaboration we may receive!

Marc Gyssens
International Meteor Organization

--

See also :
Leoniods 99 updates.
American Meteor Society


This is X/posted w/out permission (sorry Marc! )

\a


I N T E R N A T I O N A L M E T E O R O R G A N I Z A T I O N

1999 Leonids: Rapid Information Dissemination
=============================================

Dear meteor observer,

>From earlier communications, you have learned that the IMO is setting
up a communication network to obtain reliable information as soon as
possible after the event in the morning of November 18. We invite you
to contribute to this effort.

First of all, we want to point out you must DISTINGUISH between the
USUAL OBSERVATIONAL REPORTS, such as collected by the IMO's Visual
Commission, and which may be used for detailed, global analyses, and
the "EXPRESS REPORT" described below which serves as sole purpose the
compilation of a rough but reliable picture of the activity within
hours after the event.

The EXPRESS REPORT should have the following format:

Meteo R. Observer
Fireball City (45N 10E)

Time Interval (UT) Lim. Magn. Nr. of Leonids Remarks (if any)
------------------------------------------------ -----------------------
01:15-01:30 5.8 27 None
01:30-01:45 5.9 56 None
01:45-02:00 6.1 156 None
.
.
.

To the extent possible, bin your observations for this "express report"
in time interval of 15 MINUTES.

(Again, the full report of your observations will be different from
this express report, as shorter intervals are required as well as
magnitude distributions and some additional data - see the earlier
posted article with visual observing hints - but the above data
suffice for the purpose indicated.)

If you wish to collaborate with the IMO in this respect, please send
your express report for the night of November 17/18 ONLY (or, of course,
for any unexpected activity you might happen to witness)
*** IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE OBSERVATION *** to the following email
addresses:

wgn@imo.net
gyssens@hcoss.uia.ac.be

The latter is a back-up address in case Web-site access to www.imo.net
would prove to slow down our computer too much. This back-up address
will be active only on November 17 and 18!

Thank you in advance for any collaboration we may receive!

Marc Gyssens
International Meteor Organization

--

-=-=-=-=-

-=-=-=-=-