Perseids viewing at Sedili - Sat to Mon (11-13 Aug 2012)

[starfinder]

I plan to spend 2 nights this weekend at the Tanjong Sutera Resort in Sedili to try watching the Perseids meteor shower.

The Perseids are forecast to peak at around 8-10pm on Sunday night 12 Aug (S'pore/M'sia time). The shower's radiant would rise at around 11pm and would be at 30 degrees above the northern horizon by 4am. I think there would be good displays of meteors on both the Sat and Sun nights (as the peak is quite broad), weather permitting. There is also the possibility of catching the so-called Earth grazers at about the time the radiant rises.

The Moon would only rise at 2.15am on Sun morning (30% phase) and at 3.10am on Mon morning (22% phase). It would therefore not be much of a factor, and certainly the lunar conditions this year are much better than last year's. There would also be the Jupiter occultation to catch on the Sun morning.

Sedili is just an hour's drive from JB. The viewing platform at Tanjong Sutera Resort has a clear unobstructed view running from the SE, to East, to NE, N, and NW, most of it over the sea. The Milky Way is easily visible and distinct at the resort. More on the place here:
http://tanjungsutera.blogspot.sg/

Some info on the Perseids, which is one of the 2 main annual meteor showers (the other being December's Geminids):
http://www.imo.net/calendar/2012#per
http://meteorshowersonline.com/perseids.html
http://donsnotes.com/science/astronomy/ ... hower.html

I'm no expert on meteors, but from what I've read, the Perseids tend to be brighter than average, fast, and a large proportion leave trains behind.

Anybody who is interested in joining me on the trip, pls let me know soon. Depart Singapore at around 1-2pm on Sat, return and arrive back in Singapore on Monday early afternoon.

[orly_andico]

isn't the new fish farm supposed to be up already?

[starfinder]

Haven't a clue what you're referring to.

I was there 2 weeks ago with Jiahao, didn't see any fish farm. The skies were excellent. The Milky Way was bright and distinct, and was particularly impressive in Cygnus. We saw many DSOs thru my LX-90 8'' SCT and 100mm bino. A real bonus then was viewing (and later confirming) Pluto at mag 14.0, and then Neptune's moon Triton at mag 13.7, both thru the 8'' SCT.

We also saw altogether around 15-20 meteors, mostly faint sporadics.

[cloud_cover]

Eh, were you at the field with the concrete pad and power points or were you at the wooden deck beside the cafe?
Unfortunately for us imagers, the deck is unsuitable because it can vibrate. I heard it from someone (forgot who) that the fish farm is operational and 24hr lighting is up and running but if its verified as not to be, I'll be glad to hear of it. Saves me the extra hour's drive up to Mersing!
The last time I was there more than a month ago, the walls were already constructed although the roof and fish equipment were not there yet.

[starfinder]

As there has been no response to the above, the invite is closed. I've gone on to another plan for the Perseids.

[starfinder]

Due to transportation logistics, I conducted the Perseids watch at Telok Sari instead, staying two nights at the Sri Kandi Resort (Sat 11 Aug and Sun 12 Aug 2012).

The skies on the first night (Sat 11 Aug) were mostly clear from 8pm to around 1:30am, though slightly muted. It then started to get cloudy and alas was completely clouded out after 1:30am all the way till 6am. I saw 10 meteors on that night, though I think most were not Perseids (the radiant rose at around 1am). All of the meteors were white, and 7 of them were around mag 0 or -1.

Conditions on the second night (Sun 12 Aug) were much better. It had rained heavily in the late afternoon. The skies were mostly crystal clear from 8pm right up to 4:30am (the Moon rose at 3am, 22% phase, waning crescent). The Milky Way was very bright and very well defined from about 20 degrees above the horizon. It was one of the better sights of the Milky Way I've seen all these years throughout Johor, and stretched for over 100 degrees! At 8pm for example, it ran from Cygnus in the north, through Sagittarius, and on to Alpha/Beta Centauri in the south. Thundery clouds with flashes rolled in at around 5am.

I maintained the Perseids watch on that 2nd night almost non-stop from 8pm to 5am. Altogether, I recorded details of 42 meteors, much over half of which seemed to radiate from Perseus (i.e. Perseids). I probably saw another around 10 more but these were so faint that I wasn't sure if they were indeed meteors or whether I was imagining things; that uncertainty can happen with very faint streaks when one is tired and sleepy, having spent hours staring at the sky! In contrast to the first night, most of the meteors seen on the 2nd night were around mag 1 or 2 and were mostly greenish-white with a slight tinge of yellow. They also moved much faster and seemed to be thinner and leave a train behind very mometarily. This was the case even with most of those meteors that didn't seem to radiate from Perseus. I would describe most of the meteors seen that night as impressive and memorable.

The hourly distribution of the 42 recorded meteors on that 2nd night were as follows:
8-9pm: 2 meteors
9-10pm: 2 meteors
10-11pm: zero
11pm-12am: 6 meteors
12am-1am: 2 meteors
1-2am: zero (but quite sleepy then)
2-3am: 7 meteors
3-4am: 7 meteors
4-5am: 16 meteors
5-6am: totally clouded out.

As can be seen, activity increased at around 2am and rose sharply at 4am. I think if it had not clouded out at 5am, I would easily have seen around 15-20 more meteors, since the Perseus radiant was rising ever higher then. (The radiant's highest for our Singapore/Johor latitude would have been at around 35 degrees above the horizon at around 6:30am.)

The best meteor seen over the 2 nights was one at 8:12pm on the 2nd night. It was around mag -2 and travelled very slowly for around 5-6 seconds some 40-50 degrees from near the star Kaus Borealis in the Sagittarius Teapot, through Scorpius much below Antares, and ended up around Libra near (I think) the star 40-Tau Librae. It was yellowish (slightly white) and sparkled once at the end of its flight (it broke into two pieces just before that). I've now used a small celestial globe, and tracing the line backwards does seem to lead back to the Perseus radiant point. So perhaps it was a Perseid even though the radiant hadn't risen yet (classifiable therefore as an Earth grazer?). It was certainly one of the best meteors I've ever seen!

For the purpose of recording details on the meteors, I had earlier discussed the matter with Gary and we decided that a good way would be to use a counter/counting app on a smartphone and/or a voice recording app. I therefore used an Android counting app called Chroco (adding 5 cateories of meteor brightness to 'hit' counts) in conjunction with an Android voice recorder app called PCM Record to verbally record details of colour, location, etc.

The visual observations were mostly done whilst lying down flat on a portable safari bed.

For imaging purposes, I mounted a dSLR on a photo tripod with a lens set at 17mm at f/2.8. ISO 1600. An intervalometer was used to repeatedly take 25 second exposures with an interval of 1 second. I think I took around 1000 shots over the 2 nights. Having browsed through them quickly, I've seen meteors in just around half a dozen of them. Many other streaks of light on the images were on closer inspection either satellites or airplanes.

Below is one of the images of a suspected Perseid. Nice that the constellation was also in the frame. Do note that since this was a 20+ second exposure, the meteor was actually much brighter relative to the background stars than appears in the image: i.e. the stationery stars were recorded for over 20 seconds whilst the meteor lasted about a second or less.

[Gary]

Fantastic sightings and report! Thanks for sharing. Lady luck always reward those who are dedicated and willing to put in the extra effort! Mag -2, 5-6 seconds - that may be the olympic gold medal record to beat from now on!

[cataclysm]

Hi Gavin,
marvel at your at your dedication, very detailed report as always, nice work!