HUNT FOR HARTLEY DAY 2

one more fruitless effort....although I was not very optimistic about today morning as rajkot had showers late last evening but still the sky seemed to be cloudless but hazy at 5.30 am today. Also read a very large article in divyabhasker (gujrati) about three "wonderful" celestial events, the full moon, comet Hartley and the Orionids meteor shower whereas actually the full moon is going to ruin the view of the shower whereas Hartley was supposed to be 5th magnitude object (which would make it an easy object even with naked eye) but has defied all assumptions.

HUNT FOR HARTLEY

phew.... tried thrice today morning. at 1 am then at 3.30 am and finally at 5.30 am but cannot find it. The atmosphere here has also been very murky lately and there seems to be a lot of haze with mild cloud cover in the sky. At 5.30 Capella was also barely visible. Will try again today and hopefully find it. wish me luck.....

COMET 103P/HARTLEY CLOSEST TO EARTH

comet 103p/ Hartley will flyby earth at a distance of only 0.12 AU on 20th October. It was estimated that it would, at this time have a magnitude of about 5 and thus visible to the naked eye but viewers all around the world are reporting that it is much fainter than expected. I have not as yet tried to locate it but tonight I am hoping to do it with club's 15X70 binocs. Its present position is in the constellation of Auriga so I guess the most suitable time to watch it is at about 1.30 am in the morning when the constellation is at a comfortable height of about 45 degrees from the eastern horizon.(photograph courtesy of stargazerslounge.com and astrospace.co.uk)

FM DETECTION OF ORIONIDS METEOR SHOWER

RADIO METEOR DETECTION FUNDAMENTALS:  
 the term meteor does not only mean a streak of light but also the ionization of atmospheric air that accompanies the entry of a meteorite at high velocity. These ionization trails can last upto seconds and are capable of scattering radio signals from terrestrial radio stations.
FM radio stations which are 100 to 300 km away are ideal for detecting meteors. All you need is a good quality FM radio preferably with a digital frequency display. Set the receiver on the frequency of the distant radio station, for residents of Rajkot, Radio City, Ahmedabad on 91.1 MHz is an ideal choice and I have been using that station since last two years. For charting the results you need a simple software named radioskypipe which is a free download from radiosky.com .

Plug in the audio output of the FM receiver into the mic in of your pc or laptop and run the software. Make sure that the mic volume of your computer is full so that max sensitivity is available. You can facilitate your receiving by employing a simple antenna in the form of a simple long wire about 5 to 6 m long suspended horizontally in your room about 3 to 4 m high from the ground. Clip one end of the wire to the whip antenna of  the receiver and you are ready to go.(image courtesy of users.ugent.be)
The very simple theory about this type of detection setup is the fact that commercial FM signals are in VHF band. This band of radio spectrum is characterized by its line of sight propagation as the ionization level of earth's ionosphere is not sufficient to refract the signals back to earth. The ionized trail produced by a meteor has a very high level of ionization which, for a moment will scatter such signals. These scattered signal is what will be detected by our set up thus indirectly revealing a meteor.
Please let me know the results of your observation

ORIONIDS METEOR SHOWER

Orionids Meteor Shower 2010: This shower is generally active from Oct. 3 to Nov. 7 and arises from the debris left in the Earth's orbit by Comet Halley. The rate is medium and one can expect to see 20 odd faint but very fast streaks of light. The radiant of the shower lies in the Club Asterism of the Constellation of Orion (see figure: photograph courtesy of amandabauer.blogspot.com). This month, full moon occurs on 23rd of Oct thus spoiling the viewing conditions. But radio detection of this shower can be easily done. Read the next post for easy to built Radio Detector for meteor shower.