On Friday night, September 2, an awesome multiple fireball train came in over OSP. About 9:50 p.m., five degrees off the pointer stars, Dubhe & Merak of the Big Dipper, Chuck, Judy, Dareth & myself were observing the Owl Nebula and the Owl Cluster (aka the ET cluster) when that slow moving fireball came down. It was a -2 or even -3 magnitude meteor. As the meteor passed the bowl stars, it dimmed down a magnitude and broke up into four or more nuclei like a train. Somebody shouted: "a flying dumbbell!" There was much discussion and excitement after the event. When the 'flying dumbbell" got about ten degrees above the horizon, the orange and greenish flames extinguished themselves. After observing meteors at OSP for 14 years, it was still rare to see such a spectacular fireball that looked like a small version of Shoemaker-Levy 9.

Meteorite Hunt!

On Saturday, the traditional meteorite hunt was preceded by a great talk by Dick Pugh on the characteristics and origins of meteorites. After the talk, I gathered most of the OSP kids for our "nickel" meteorite hunt. We had about 40 kids participate and most of them found some nickels! Here are a few photos from that event.

Typical OSP sunset!