From: Wes Stone <howard048 [at] centurytel.net>
Date: 9/01/2007 8:38 PDT


I got out nice and early at 2:30am (0930UT). We had rain showers throughout Thursday night, so I was just happy to see clear sky. The moonlight was pretty intense, so I chose to obstruct it behind a tree. Unfortunately, this also brought some other trees into view, and I lived with a 20-25% obstructed FOV throughout the morning. In retrospect, I probably could have seen a few more bright Aurigids around the time of maximum if I had disregarded the Moon and chose an unobstructed view toward the east. But at least these data should be consistent.

I was absolutely skunked for the first half hour. My first meteor, 39 minutes into the watch, was a blue -3 ANT that I managed to see behind me. It was another 13 minutes before the first Aurigid appeared (and 8 minutes after that the first sporadic came). So I had a pretty solid baseline of background activity :-) . Aurigid rates began to pick up at 1041UT. The activity didn't build to a sharp maximum, but rather was a series of spurts and lulls like a major shower maximum. I had several minutes with two Aurigids, and only one with three (1121-1122UT). No bursts of multiple meteors. At 1126UT, there were nearly simultaneous -5 and 0 Aurigids. I thought: "This is really going to get good." Unfortunately, it was almost over by that time, and activity slowed to a crawl. Overall, I saw 33 Aurigids in 2.7+ hours Teff. The report below contains five-minute intervals over the most active period.

The Aurigids were bright, with a mean magnitude of +0.5. There were 4 Aurigid fireballs of -3 or brighter, and 8 Aurigids in the negative magnitudes. The predominant color was orange-red, although there were a couple of blue ones and the two brightest fireballs were white. The brightest fireball of -5 left a twisting 30-second train.

In spite of the rather low numbers, this event had a very dramatic feel to it as I never knew what was going to happen next.

Observer: Wesley Stone (STOWE)
Location: Chiloquin, OR (42d 35m N, 121d 52m W)
Method: Counting: Watch/Tape recorder
Date: 2007 September 1

0930-1035...Teff=1.00h...F=1.33...LM=5.6...ANT 1...AUR 1...Spo 1
1037-1042...Teff=0.08h...F=1.33...LM=5.8...ANT 0...AUR 1...Spo 1
1042-1047...Teff=0.08h...F=1.33...LM=5.8...ANT 0...AUR 2...Spo 0
1047-1052...Teff=0.08h...F=1.25...LM=5.8...ANT 0...AUR 1...Spo 0
1052-1057...Teff=0.08h...F=1.25...LM=5.8...ANT 0...AUR 1...Spo 0
1057-1102...Teff=0.08h...F=1.25...LM=5.8...ANT 0...AUR 1...Spo 0
1102-1107...Teff=0.08h...F=1.25...LM=5.8...ANT 0...AUR 3...Spo 0
1107-1112...Teff=0.08h...F=1.25...LM=5.8...ANT 0...AUR 3...Spo 2
1112-1117...Teff=0.08h...F=1.25...LM=5.8...ANT 0...AUR 1...Spo 0
1117-1122...Teff=0.08h...F=1.25...LM=5.8...ANT 0...AUR 5...Spo 1
1122-1127...Teff=0.08h...F=1.25...LM=5.8...ANT 0...AUR 4...Spo 0
1127-1132...Teff=0.08h...F=1.25...LM=5.8...ANT 0...AUR 1...Spo 0
1132-1137...Teff=0.08h...F=1.25...LM=5.8...ANT 0...AUR 3...Spo 0
1137-1142...Teff=0.08h...F=1.25...LM=5.9...ANT 0...AUR 0...Spo 1
1142-1147...Teff=0.08h...F=1.25...LM=5.9...ANT 0...AUR 3...Spo 0
1147-1152...Teff=0.08h...F=1.25...LM=5.9...ANT 0...AUR 0...Spo 1
1152-1157...Teff=0.08h...F=1.25...LM=5.9...ANT 0...AUR 1...Spo 1
1157-1202...Teff=0.08h...F=1.25...LM=5.9...ANT 0...AUR 1...Spo 0
1202-1224...Teff=0.37h...F=1.25...LM=5.7...ANT 1...AUR 1...Spo 1

Global Magnitude Distribuitions (0930-1224)
ANT (N=2) -3(1), +2(1)

AUR (N=33) -5(1), -4(1), -3(2), -2(1), -1(3), 0(6), +1(7), +2(7), +3(4), +4(1)

Spo (N=9) +1(2), +2(4), +3(2), +4(1)