Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/mac/TEXT/SPACEDIG/V17/V17NO006.TXT

Text File | 1993-08-13 | 31KB | 755 lines

Space Digest                Tue, 10 Aug 93       Volume 17 : Issue 006

Today's Topics:
       "Psychotopologic History of Helicopters" -- Info request
                                <None>
                   Auction of Soviet space goodies
     Buran Hype? (was Re: DC-X Prophets and associated problems)
     Cold Fusion and its possible uses (if it is proven to exist)
         Cold Fussion, NOT! just not been proven real well!?
               Cost of Shuttle (was Re: Budget figures)
                    Did NOAA-I get up OK? (3 msgs)
                  Do astronauts use sleeping pills?
                             funny space
 Henry Spencer in the Slow Zone (Re: Ghost Wheels & HenrySpancer_Zoo)
                       KEPS for NOAA -I(13)???
                  LEO Satellite downlink frequencies
          Low Tech Alternatives, Info Post it here! (2 msgs)
                  Magellan Circular Orbit Operations
                       Titan IV failure. Info?
           What's up with Perseids (1993 or 1994?) (2 msgs)

        Welcome to the Space Digest!!  Please send your messages to
        "[e-mail]", and (un)subscription requests of the form
        "Subscribe Space <your name>" to one of these addresses: listserv@uga
        (BITNET), rice::boyle (SPAN/NSInet), utadnx::utspan::rice::boyle
        (THENET), or [e-mail] (Internet).
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 22:54:06 GMT
From: Rudolf Stoert <[e-mail]>
Subject: "Psychotopologic History of Helicopters" -- Info request
Newsgroups: aus.aviation,alt.folklore.science,alt.discordia,sci.space

        Hello netters -

My name is Dr. Heinrich Dubel. A friend of mine, r.
stoert, invited me to test his preferred world: the
Internet: So: Is there anyone out there who can answer me
a couple of questions on helicopters, I. Sikorsky, etc? I
am mostly interested in both historical and strange
informations...!

I need the info for an over-all work on the
Psychotopologic History of the Helikopter.

1) -- Which was the first helicoter to see military
action on the side of the Alliies in WWII. -- which
Model, when build, where/when in service, unit? I believe
it was some Sikorsky model, need confirm. -- There is a
Hollywood movie feat. YulBrunner/RichardBurton (a.o.)
about aNazi Fortress on Alpen-mountain-top, allied
commando escapes with Heli in this flic. -- Name of the
movie? anything heard about reference to reality a/o
fictional operations linked to helicopters during the
early years. General Sikorsky Information.

2)  Howard Hughes Aircraft Industries -- when started
heli-development a/o production ? -- which where the
models? -- when did it happen? -- general information
about the early time, evt. Gossip/Info about Howard the
Person &his possible possesions/myth-data/nut-talk  with
the subject helicopter.

3) ANYTHING on Soviet/Russian helicopter engineering in
the beginning & medium pasttime-range, like names of
constructionists, vita, years, models, illustrations,
photo. Iso far know about Professor Mil & comrades & one
Komitee called ZAGI, these guys builded 3 thre prototypes
between 1930 - 35 , or so says the propaganda.

4) Material on Helikopters which appears
strange/rare/interesting WHATSOEVER.

5) Please, don't hesitate to name ftp- or gopher-sites,
libraries, etc.

Thanx in advance.

Please - send any answers directly to

[e-mail]

as neither him nor me are regularly subscribers of this newsgroup/list.

Thanx again

Dr. Heinrich Dubel



-- r. stoert : [e-mail] --
-- a screaming comes across the sky ...

------------------------------

Date: 9 Aug 93 18:45:21 -0600
From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <[e-mail]>
Subject: <None>
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Yuan Liu) writes:
> # [e-mail] (S.H.) writes:
>
>                           ^^^^
> # >Really ?
> #
> # >What else are you going to Kill ?
> The initials of this "guy" should be a dead giveaway.
> Judging from the postings generated from "him" so far, this is obviously an
> attempt to run a clone of the AI program known as Henry Specer (aka Sander at
> the Zoo) deep inside the slow zone [1].

No, he's simply attempted to port the "Henry" program (which, for
reasons I won't enumerate, clearly lives in the Unix world) to MS-DOS.

Hence the program runs much more slowly and acts kind of confused.  No
change in Zones required.

Death to vermin.

Bill Higgins, Beam Jockey              | Motto:
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory  | You can accomplish anything
Bitnet:           [e-mail]  | with enough Dr. Pepper,
Internet:       [e-mail]  | microwave popcorn, and
SPAN/Hepnet:           43011::HIGGINS  | a sturdy Internet connection.

------------------------------

Date: 9 Aug 93 16:07:22 -0600
From: Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey <[e-mail]>
Subject: Auction of Soviet space goodies
Newsgroups: sci.space

My morning mail had a message from Dennis W. Webb
<[e-mail]> which he's given me permission to quote:

[begin Webb message]

There was a front-page article in yesterday's (Sunday) NY Times
about an upcoming auction at Sotheby's of Soviet space program
memorabilia.  To be auctioned off are such items as turn-of-the-
century monographs of Konstantin E. Tsiolokovsky, the slide rule
of Sergei P. Korolyov, lunar fragments, an elaborate never-used
space suit, and more.  Some of the humbler items have stories
behind them, for instance: "A badly frayed space glove turns out,
in the telling, to have been critical for an astronaut who spent
seven desperate hours in a space walk, clawing at a damaged hatch
that threatened doom.  An innocuous packet of nuts and bolts from
one of the earliest flights was nervously collected by an
astronaut startled to find pieces of his spaceship coming loose,
just like parts of a badly made Soviet automobile, and floating
about."

One final anecdote: "The tales sound as potentially priceless as
the various artifacts offered by Col Aleksei Leonov, the first
human to walk in space.  He returned to earth badly, landing far
off course in the Urals during a three-day blizzard.  He managed
to build a fire outside the capsule with some tree scraps, only to
be chased back inside his snowbound space ship by a Russian bear...
Colonel Leonov thereafter ordered a special combined flare-and-shotgun
designed to deal with bears."


: Dennis Webb                 :                               :
: Hoffman-II, Alexandria VA   :    "Quot homines,             :
: [phone]              :       tot sententiae."        :
: [e-mail] :                               :

[end Webb message]


More details from the 8 August *Times* article:

Auction is 11 December.  Stuff will be on display at Sotheby's for a
week preceding the auction.  (We may hope that some Usenet
correspondent will report on this...)

The spacesuit is one designed for a Moon landing.

Most of this stuff seems to come from the personal collections of
cosmonauts looking for cash.

Other items include:

--Space food samples
--Mir cutlery etched with designs by bored cosmonauts
--Khruschev's telegram congratulating Gagarin on his flight
--Gherman Titov's fork (first guy to eat in space)
--Ivan Ivanovich, first mannequin to fly aboard Vostok

I would *really* like to have Sergei Korolyov's slide rule.  Do you
suppose 100 bucks would take it?  (-:  I don't have much money...
Anybody care to bid on other items?

Bill Higgins, Beam Jockey              | If a comet falls on Jupiter
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory  | and nobody hears it,
Bitnet:           [e-mail]  | does it make a noise?
Internet:       [e-mail]  |
SPAN/Hepnet:           43011::HIGGINS  | --Dr. Barry D. Gehm

------------------------------

Date: 9 Aug 1993 17:09:44 GMT
From: "Bruce d. Scott" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Buran Hype? (was Re: DC-X Prophets and associated problems)
Newsgroups: sci.space

Jim West wrote:

"A couple of years back I was fortunate enough (at Goddard Space Flight
Center) to hear a speech by the director of the Soviet space program. (I
can't remember his name, unfortunately.) He made to statements that amused
us all greately (the quotes are certainly not exact, but make the point):

[gives a couple of Sagdeev-like quips]"

Was this Roald Sagdeev? The lines you give make me think so. He likes to
take jabs at all the stuff he had to swallow to rise in the USSR.
--
Gruss,
Dr Bruce Scott                             The deadliest bullshit is
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Plasmaphysik       odorless and transparent
bds at spl6n1.aug.ipp-garching.mpg.de                 -- W Gibson

------------------------------

Date: 9 Aug 93 21:03:35 GMT
From: Matt McIrvin <[e-mail]>
Subject: Cold Fusion and its possible uses (if it is proven to exist)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.space

[e-mail] (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:
>In <north.744567699@watop> [e-mail] (Mark North) writes:
>>[e-mail] (fred j mccall 575-3539) writes:

>>>Better go check that physics book again, son.  There's a lot more in
>>>the world than protons and electrons.

>>I think I'll spare you further embarrassment and not reply 8^).

>One has to love the 'non-reply' -- if you didn't reply, how come I can
>reply to your 'non-reply'?  All the net.clever of the typical Frosh,
>Mark.  I *am* impressed.

>[Is this an assertion on your part that there *are* only electrons and
>protons and that I should be embarrassed at having claimed otherwise?
>;-)]

I think what he meant was that you *seemed* to imply that Millikan's
fractional-charge data is accepted today as evidence of free quarks.
It isn't, though there seems to be a minority that regards it as
such.  A "physics book" written by the orthodox probably wouldn't list
this as the earliest definite evidence of particles with fractional
charges, though it might mention it as a curious and not entirely
explained result.

There is a big difference between finding quarks and finding free quarks.
Today the evidence for quarks is fairly solid and pretty universally
accepted in the particle physics community.  The evidence for free
quarks is *not* universally accepted.  Of course, that doesn't mean
Millikan didn't see them, but it would be misleading to claim that
it's common knowledge he did.

The apparent nonexistence of free quarks was initially considered a
stumbling block for the quark model of hadrons, and in that era
free quarks were searched for extensively.  Eventually quantum
chromodynamics, with its self-coupled gluons, gained popularity
as a dynamical theory of how the quarks interacted with each other.
The computational evidence seems at the moment to favor the
idea that QCD (1) is correct (for instance, it seems to predict
hadron masses correctly) and (2) confines quarks to the interior
of hadrons, by means of a tremendous attractive force that does
not diminish with distance.  The discovery of fractional charges in
Millikan's data would *not* be dramatic confirmation of present ideas of
physics; it would, rather, be a dramatic surprise in contradiction
to current theory.  If the fractional charges were quarks of the
usual variety, the oil drops would possess a net color charge--
and they, or the free quarks on them, would be subject to forces far
in excess of the electrical ones exerted by the Millikan apparatus.
--
Matt            01234567   <--  Indent-o-Meter (mod 8)
McIrvin         ^               Void where prohibited by your editor.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 19:54:07 GMT
From: fred j mccall 575-3539 <[e-mail]>
Subject: Cold Fussion, NOT! just not been proven real well!?
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.physics.fusion

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Dick Jackson) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Gary Coffman) writes:
>>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>>>Cold Fusion is dead? Must not be, if popular science has an article on it..
>>It's not dead, it's just fallen into the _Chariots of the Gods_ zone,
>>which is just west of the Bermuda Triangle zone and the Face on Mars
>>zone.

>Or, if you like Monty Python, "Its not dead --- but its coughing up blood."

It's not dead.  It's merely a fleshwound.  Come back here and fight,
you coward!

[It may not be 'dead' insofar as people looking for nooks and
crannies, but the idea of generating power (or anything much more than
lab curiosities) out of it seems pretty remote.]

::bonk::  Well, it's dead now!

--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[e-mail] - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.

------------------------------

From: fred j mccall 575-3539 <[e-mail]>
Subject: Cost of Shuttle (was Re: Budget figures)
Newsgroups: sci.space

Distribution: sci
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 19:36:43 GMT
Lines: 31
Sender: [e-mail]
Source-Info:  Sender is really [e-mail]

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

>> Ah, but you see, if you hadn't got a car in the first place
>> you wouldn't have been able to live 10 miles from work...
>> You being so silly buying a car (or conversely getting a
>> place to live[job] that far from your job[house] forcing
>> you to have a car in the first place) has
>> now cost you enormously, get rid of the house, and car, then
>> go look for a place closer to work!

>And not to forget that the calculations did not include the part of
>taxes going into creating a massive road infrastructure. Which
>everyone is forced to pay for, regardless of usage. In reality there
>should be a rental fee for your 20 miles/day, compact car class road
>use. If the fee covered your total share of repair, expansion,
>amortization, pollution, etc... it might change the balance.

>My, my. We just might have space shuttle pricing logic being applied
>to the automobile in every day life without our having really thought
>about it :-)

Actually, this is probably discussed in any decent intermediate
economics course.  Pick up a book and look under 'Full Costing'.  Of
course, the Libertarian approach doesn't work, either -- pick up a
book and look under 'Externalities' and 'Public Goods'.

--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[e-mail] - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 21:56:00 GMT
From: Richard Kors <[e-mail]>
Subject: Did NOAA-I get up OK?
Newsgroups: sci.space

Thomas Sandford ([e-mail]) wrote:
: The environmental/meteorological satellite NOAA-I (to become NOAA-13 if it
: works ok) was supposed to have been launched at 1002Z on 8th August. Does
: anyone have any information about whether this launch took place/was
: successful?
: --
: Thomas Sandford | [e-mail].u


CNN news this moring indicated everthing was OK.   I'm looking for the th
KEPS and the first APT images.  Anybody have some operational information?

Dick Kors
[e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Mon,  9 Aug 93 17:45:00 -0600
From: Jeff Wallach <[e-mail]>
Subject: DID NOAA-I GET UP OK?
Newsgroups: sci.space

NOAA I (13) was launched on August 9, 1993 at 10:02 UTC.

Jeff Wallach, Ph.D.
Dallas Remote Imaging Group
[e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: 9 Aug 1993 23:23:46 GMT
From: Carl Rigg <[e-mail]>
Subject: Did NOAA-I get up OK?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Thomas Sandford) writes:
|> Newsgroups: sci.space
|> From: [e-mail] (Thomas Sandford)
|> Subject: Did NOAA-I get up OK?
|> Date: Mon, 9 Aug 93 18:20:31 BST
|>
|> The environmental/meteorological satellite NOAA-I (to become NOAA-13 if it
|> works ok) was supposed to have been launched at 1002Z on 8th August. Does
|> anyone have any information about whether this launch took place/was
|> successful?

The launch was scrubbed on 8th August because of a problem with the umbilical to the
spacecraft. The launch was rescheduled to 9th August at the same time and went
off successfully.
thanks

        Carl

|> --
|> Thomas Sandford | [e-mail]

--

------------------------------

Date: 9 Aug 1993 22:05:45 GMT
From: George William Herbert <[e-mail]>
Subject: Do astronauts use sleeping pills?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>,
Claudio Egalon <[e-mail]> wrote:
>Sometime ago, I read an interview  given by Byron
>Lichtemberg, who flew the Shuttle twice as a Payload
>Specialist, and, according to the interview, he
>complained that it was very difficult to sleep in
>the Shuttle because of all the noise in the
>Shuttle due to the pumps that must be functioning
>all the time to keep the spacecraft "habitable".
>[...]

When I talked to Byron after he gave a presentation at
UC Berkeley about three months ago, he said that after
some more work on that problem, the conclusion was that
his having gotten the "downward" facing bunk was
a serious contributor to his lack of sleep.  He slept
much better his second flight, when he got a real bunk.

Other astronauts in the "down" bunk have reported higher
sleep disturbance rates, and there's just enough of a
statistical sample for the results to be significant.
So there will be no "down" bunks on new spacecraft,
Freedom included.

[For those of you who aren't familiar with the shuttle's
internal layout, it has one of the sleep bunks oriented
so that it's essentially on a local "roof" relative to
spacecraft "down", which is down when the shuttle is
sitting on the ground on its landing gear.  This is the
orientation most astronauts have adopted as being
the default down, and apparently sleeping "hanging on the
ceiling" is disturbing, zero-G or not...]

-george william herbert
Retro Aerospace

------------------------------

Date: 9 Aug 1993 15:39 CDT
From: "Windows NT: from the people who brought you EDLIN." <[e-mail]>
Subject: funny space
Newsgroups: sci.space

>TV for Tuesday, 16 April 1999, 8 pm, Ch. 9  LET FREEDOM WRING (Comedy/Drama)
>
>Frustrated and bored by the lack of a clear scientific goal, the eight, or
>possibly four, astronauts on Space Station Freedom set up a mock TV game show
>and take turns trying to guess the cost of various on-board components.  The
>monotony is broken by an order from OSHA requiring that a wheel-chair ramp be
>constructed on the docking port, or NASA may no longer accept Federal funds.
>Special guest star:  President Dan Quayle, on his way to Mars.

I pulled this off rec.humor.funny, in case some of you aren't reading that
other humor group.  Maybe this will incite another opinion war between the
NASA-shiites and space-shiites.  One of you space shiites probably posted
this anyway.
Craig

------------------------------

Date: 9 Aug 93 20:32:56 GMT
From: Yuan Liu <[e-mail]>
Subject: Henry Spencer in the Slow Zone (Re: Ghost Wheels & HenrySpancer_Zoo)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Phil G. Fraering) writes:
# [e-mail] (S.H.) writes:

                            ^^^^
# >Really ?
#
# >What else are you going to Kill ?
#
# A "kill file" is simply a file with names or subject headings that
# the posessor has deceided to stop reading postings from. Much of
# the news software out there is capable of filtering out messages from
# such people.
#

The initials of this "guy" should be a dead giveaway.
Judging from the postings generated from "him" so far, this is obviously an
attempt to run a clone of the AI program known as Henry Specer (aka Sander at
the Zoo) deep inside the slow zone [1].

Yuan Liu
[e-mail]

PS. :) :)
PPS. [1]  V. Vinge "A Fire upon the Deep"

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 21:59:27 GMT
From: Richard Kors <[e-mail]>
Subject: KEPS for NOAA -I(13)???
Newsgroups: sci.space

When will the APT be turned on and where are the KEPS??
(I am assuming at this moment that all is well)

Dick Kors
[e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 23:04:54 GMT
From: Steve Maziarz <[e-mail]>
Subject: LEO Satellite downlink frequencies
Newsgroups: sci.space

I'm looking for a list of current low earth orbiting satellites
and their downlink frequencies. Any info would be appreciated.

------------------------------

Date: 9 Aug 1993 22:37:19 GMT
From: George William Herbert <[e-mail]>
Subject: Low Tech Alternatives, Info Post it here!
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]>,
Gary Coffman <[e-mail]> wrote:
>The $2,000 a pound
>cost only applies if the launcher is loaded to max gross. Unless you
>custom tailor the payload so that it masses exactly the max load for
>the launcher, and you generally can't do that unless your cargo is
>some bulk material you can load in arbitrary quanity, then your mission
>cost is not going to track the mythic $2,000 a pound figure the launcher
>is theoretically capable of achieving.

If you follow the masses of launched spacecraft, they VERY closely
track the max mass which that launcher variant was capable of
launching for that mission.  One of the earliest steps in spacecraft
design is to size your payload for a specific launch vehicle and
make the most use of that capability.

>As an extreme example, suppose I have a vital one pound payload I need
>to launch. I'm not going to say, "Hey Saturn only costs $2,000 a pound"
>and go try to launch my one pound on the Saturn for $2,000. It's going
>to cost me $500 million to use the Saturn to launch one pound the same
>as if it were at max gross. That's my *mission* cost for that launcher.
>Instead, I'm going to look at Scout for $10 million, or Pegasus for
>$15 million, or even Atlas for $35 million. All of them have a lower
>mission cost even though the cheapest of them has the highest per
>pound cost. [...]

If you're regularly launching midsize missions (example: Regular
service by Soyuz or Progress to Mir...) you just throw your left-handed
metric 8.65mm spanner in the next flight and forget it.  Or beg,
borrow, or steal a secondary payload spot on the next possible
vehicle if it's going to orbit, not a station.

Missions where you suddenly need an odd-sized item are rare because
of the time scales invovled in space activities.  Most launches are
pretty big, because sattelites are pretty big, and they don't have
any opportunity for going back and tweaking a one-pount item.
Any situation where needing odd-sized items at irregular
intervals is likely to come up, you have lightsat launchers
or regularly scheduled larger launchers with some small
discretionary payload available.

You design your vehicle to take up the whole possible payload mass,
using "spare" fuel (i.e. not mission critical) as the margin mass
or something similar.  As things develop, you solidify the masses
more, can tell how much extra fuel you can actually bring, etc.
If you're running over, you cut and cut and often have fits about
problems, but if you're running low you can always find something
to take up the extra space or mass ;-) that's easssy.....
Most vehicles, by flight time, are a whole lot closer than 95%
of the max flight weight allowable.

-george william herbert
Retro Aerospace

------------------------------

Date: 9 Aug 93 23:31:55 GMT
From: Paul Dietz <[e-mail]>
Subject: Low Tech Alternatives, Info Post it here!
Newsgroups: sci.space

About cost/lb, with half-full launchers...

The TRW/Boeing cost optimized launcher study of the late 1960s
concluded that it would be cheaper to build (for the projected launch
rate) a 100,000 lb capacity launcher and sometimes launch it half
empty, instead of developing more than one launcher to more closely
match payload size -- and this for a vehicle that had a development
cost of a bit over $2 B (1993 dollars).

Of course, once the market gets big enough, one can amortize the
development cost of more nearly optimally sized launchers.

        Paul F. Dietz
        [e-mail]

------------------------------

Date: 9 Aug 1993 17:29:26 GMT
From: Steve Derry <[e-mail]>
Subject: Magellan Circular Orbit Operations
Newsgroups: sci.space,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary

Ron Baalke ([e-mail]) wrote:
: Forwarded from Doug Griffith, Magellan Project Manager

: 3.  Circular orbit operations will officially begin on August 16th.

Is there any funding available for these operations?  If so, how long will
it last?

--
Steve Derry
<[e-mail]>

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 14:39:36 GMT
From: Quagga <[e-mail]>
Subject: Titan IV failure. Info?
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Frank Crary) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Greg Cronau) writes:
>>2.) Sometime in the 70's the US government used a ship called the _Glomar
>>    Explorer_ to attempt to salvage a russion submarine. It wasn't fiction,
>>    it really *did* happen.
>>3.) The Glomar Explorer was owned by Howard *Hughs*, not Hunt.
>
>As far as I know, the Glomar Explorer is owned by the Woods Hole
>Oceanographic Institute and the Institute was never owned by
>Howard Hughs.
>
>                                                Frank Crary
>                                                CU Boulder
Um, wasn't this the Glomar Challenger, owned by Summa Corporation (A Hughes
company).. I hope this isn't wavering far off the subject (or off sci.space)
but it seems to me I recall reports of them recovering a sub and returning
bodies of the crewmen to the Soviet Union. I recall that this mission was
something of  a challenge in that it was staged on short notice, was a very
very deep salvage, and (I think) the Soviets weren't too keen on the idea
of one of their subs being salvaged by the Americans..

equus quagga.
[e-mail]
"But you can call me Cheryl.."
"I have found that an unopening parachute will get your
 COMPLETE and UNDIVIDED attention very very quickly!"  <-me.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 20:09:38 GMT
From: "Scott R. Ehrlich" <[e-mail]>
Subject: What's up with Perseids (1993 or 1994?)
Newsgroups: sci.space

I keep reading messages that Perseids will be occuring Aug. 11 and 12
of this year, and some other messages mentioning that the shower will
occur NEXT year.   Also, for this year's shower, the messages mentioning
1994 have said the best view will be in Asia (western, I think?)

What's the scoup?  Should I set time aside on the 12th of Aug. for the
shower, or wait until next year?

Thanks much!


--
===============================================================================
| Scott Ehrlich                Internet: [e-mail]                       |
| Amateur Radio: wy1z          AX.25: wy1z@n0ary.#nocal.ca.usa.na             |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 22:49:05 GMT
From: Henry Spencer <[e-mail]>
Subject: What's up with Perseids (1993 or 1994?)
Newsgroups: sci.space

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Scott R. Ehrlich) writes:
>I keep reading messages that Perseids will be occuring Aug. 11 and 12
>of this year, and some other messages mentioning that the shower will
>occur NEXT year.   Also, for this year's shower, the messages mentioning
>1994 have said the best view will be in Asia (western, I think?)
>
>What's the scoup?  Should I set time aside on the 12th of Aug. for the
>shower, or wait until next year?

There will most assuredly be a Perseid shower both this year and next.

What people are guessing about is the occurrence of a possible Perseid
*storm*, which will be much more worth seeing.  Meteor showers are
exciting only to dedicated enthusiasts.  Meteor storms can be awesome.

Last I heard, this year was still the best possibility for a storm.
Earth will be in an unusually good position; if the Perseids are going
to storm, this is the year for it.  There is reason to suspect they might.

The *most* *probable* time for a storm is 0100 UT on the 12th, which is
2100 (9PM for the innumerate :-)) on the 11th EDT.  This is not good for
North American observers, even on the East Coast -- the sky won't be
very dark yet.  The surge of activity last year which produced the
storm prediction for this year was fairly short.

On the other hand, that time is only an informed guess.  It might storm
then.  It might storm four hours earlier, or four hours later.  It might
even storm all night, although that's rather unlikely.

The gung-ho meteor observers will be up all night just in case.  If you
aren't that dedicated, plan to spend the evening of the 11th, say from
sunset to your bedtime :-), in the darkest outdoor area you can find.
Note:  Wed 11th, not Thurs 12th!  (Non-Western-Hemisphere readers will
have to make appropriate adjustments.)
--
"Every time I inspect the mechanism     | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
closely, more pieces fall off."         |  [e-mail]  utzoo!henry

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End of Space Digest Volume 17 : Issue 006
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