From: TerryMosel@aol.com Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2003 16:21:23 EST Subject: Comets, Quadrantids, JMSE, Party Hi all, Happy New Year to one and all! Let's hope for some better weather: apparently December was the cloudiest (in NI at least) for 16 years!). 2003 hasn't got off to a good start in Glengormley, where I've had rain all day from a cloudbase just a few feet above my roof! But it's better elsewhere, and I've just had a t/c report from Martin Eagle in Eyeries in the Beara peninsula in West Cork that he saw Kudo-Fujikawa earlier this evening in 10x50 binocs, looking like a fainter version of M13 (no tail). So there's hope yet. He also reported a faint greenish glow along the N horizon on the evening of 30/12, which sounds like an aurora, and pretty rare for that latitude! No reports of obseravtions of the other new comet, NEAT, details of which were in the last email. Friday evening (3 Jan) sees the maximum of the Quadrantid Meteors, usually the 3rd best annual shower: the max rate can approach 100 per hour in good conditions, but the peak is brief, and if it occurs in daylight, or if it's cloudy for the best few hours, or there's moonlight, then hard luck! Conditions this year are fair, with the maximum predicted for 22h that evening, as the radiant is just past lower culmination, and starting to climb in the NNE sky. It's not high up until the small hours of next morning, but at least there's no moonlight. For once Northern observers are best favoured, with the radiant higher here at any given hour of the night than for Southerners. The radiant actually lies in N. Bootes (the shower is named after the now defunct constellation of Quadrans, which is now in Bootes), at R.A. 15h 28m, Dec + 50 deg. It lies about midway between the end of the Plough and the Head of Draco. You might see 40-50 per hour in good conditions; maybe 60-80 per hour if the maximum is a little late, and therefore occurring when the radiant is higher. Observations anytime from evening twilight all through the night will be useful! If it's clear tonight, loook out for a very rare event if you have a reasonable-sized telescope: It's a Jupiter Mutual Satellite Event (JMSE): in this case a partial occultation of Io by Ganymede. What makes it even more interesting is that Io & Ganymede will be in transit across the disc of Jupiter at the time! And as Europa is in eclipse/occultation by Jupiter itself at that time, only one (Callisto) of the usual 4 moons will be visible off the disc! The details are: Jan 2: Gannymede occults Io: start: 01h 50m 10s; end: 02h 04m 32s; magnitude: 27%. Configuration, as seen in an inverting telescope, Left to Right: Callisto, Jupiter/Ganymede/Io. Europa enters eclipse by Jupiter at 23.19 on Jan 2, emerging from occultation at 03.37. Full observing details are in STARDUST for those of you lucky & wise enough to be IAA members! Good Luck! LAST CALL! IAA XMAS /NEW YEAR PARTY: Don't forget to book your ticket(s) for the social event of the year, on Saturday 4 January, 7.30 p.m., at the Tudor Private Cinema, Comber. The film is 'Space Cowboys', and a great selection of buffet food & drinks are included in the price. Full details were sent out with STARDUST: if you've lost them, or didn't get them, contact me immediately by return, or John Hall, tel 9084 3109, or email at < jimmyaquarius@btinternet.com>. Great fun, and great value, with various family tickets available. Terry Moseley
| Last Revised: 2003 January 7th WWW contact: webmaster@star.arm.ac.uk |
Go to HOME Page  |