Fireball over Pomerania (1st station). Nowe Miasto Lubawskie Foto: PFN/Janusz Laskowski

Just two days ago, on 13th of October 2:52 UT, sky was lightened by bright meteor event called fireball. "Ball of light" could be seen above city Płock and flew North-East in direction of city Ostrołęka. Fireball was the brightest just above city Ciechanów with estimated brightness of -8 magnitude (approximately 400 times brighter than brightest stars). Probably it was not seen by many observers early in the morning sky.

Foto: Perseid (K. Polakowski)

In Urzędów near Lublin 15 CMW's observers had the opportunity to observe maximum of Perseid's activity. Reporting observer - Krzysztof Polakowski - said that he counted about 200 Perseid events within 3 hours. Crude estimation of ZHR can be even over 100! The number of 21 events were photographed with digital camera's, three meteors were brighter than -4 mag.

It is worth to point that Polish observations are very critical for good estimation of ZHR. Only our group (among observers in Europe) had clear skies and nice limiting magnitude. In the coming hours CMW's observers will send their counts to IMO and add another points to activity graph.

In two weeks time next Astronomical Camp will start in Ostrowik Astronomical Observatory (Warsaw University). Main goal is to share our experience about observing and data analyzing techniques with 10 new observers. Five advanced observers will take scientific tuition of the new ones.

After summer holiday test and enhancements we give in your hands SCS program (version 1.15) which is written to make automatic meteor-shower association. This software will help you to fill reports from your plotted observations. Now you can check your own calculations of meteor-radiant association procedure or use it to report plotted observation to International Meteor Organization. Program is fed with files typed using Corrida.

Below you can see screenshot how SCS works under Linux OS. There is also version prepared for Windows users.

"The Fireball brighter than the Moon!!!"

2008 11 09/10 01:28:08 UT PFN Kraków Maciej Kwinta SEE ANIMATION

Fireball"earth-grazing"
duration: >8 s First camera:

2008 11 09/10 01:11:04 UT PAVO7 PFN Kraków Maciej Kwinta

2008 10 21/22 23:15:16 UT PFN 19 Kobiernice
     SEE LARGE SIZE

Next Friday "Fourth Seminar of the Polish Fireball Network" will begin in the Ostrowik Observatory near Warsaw. Invited participants will have an opportunity to hear lectures given by the PFN members and invited guests. We plan to talk mainly about new developments in the network but also about meteorites.

Special guest talk will be given by Igor Soszyński, member of the OGLE team.

Below you can see sketch of the Seminar talks and events. All talks are given in polish.

2008 05 08/09 01:03: UT PFN 24 Gniewowo Krzysztof Polakowski & Halina Polakowska
Nikon D70s 30 s 1600 ISO Zenitar 2.8/16 f/3.5
SEE LARGE SIZE

Przemysław Żołądek¹, Mariusz Wiśniewski², Arkadiusz Olech², Mirosław Krasnowski¹, Maciej Kwinta¹, Karol Fietkiewicz³, Kamil Złoczewski², Krzysztof Mularczyk⁵, Wojciech Jonderko¹, Izabela Spaleniak⁴, Łukasz Gruszka¹

¹ Comets and Meteors Workshop, Bartycka 18, 00-716 Warszawa, Poland brahi@op.pl

² Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Polish Academy of Sciences, Bartycka 18, 00-716 Warszawa, Poland (mwisniew,olech,kzlocz)@camk.edu.pl

³ Warsaw University of Technology, Department of Physics, Koszykowa 75, 00-662 Warszawa, Poland

⁴ Astronomical Institute, University of Wrocław, Kopernika 11, 51-622 Wrocław, Poland

⁵ Warsaw University Observatory, al. Ujazdowskie 4, 00-478 Warszawa, Poland
kmularcz@astrouw.edu.pl

Abstract

The results of the Perseid 2004 observing campaign are presented. Short description of equipment and reduction methods is given. Predicted 1-rev Perseid peak on August 12/13 was confirmed by video and visual observations, moreover another peak of activity was detected the same night around 1 UT. In total 87 meteoroid trajectories and orbits were calculated and resulting mean orbital elements of Perseid stream were presented.

Meteors registered during that night by Miroslaw Krasnowski PFN Poznan