Brendan Shaw writes:

After days of rain the skies finally cleared on Saturday evening, the night of the 2006 Orionid meteor shower maximum. Amazing! Maybe, after several abortive BAS attempts at meteor-watching over the last twelve months (cloud, cloud, rain and more cloud), we could repeat the success of our 2005 Perseid watch. Maybe.

A small but intrepid band gathered at my house on Saturday night - Lesley, Michelle, Chairman-Dave, John Murphy, Military-Dave and me. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. And sisters. Since Orion (Orionids, get it?) doesn't rise until about 11PM we weren't in any hurry and talked of this and that. What do intrepid meteor watchers talk about you might wonder. Zenithal hourly rates? The North Polar limiting-magnitude sequence? Radiant drift? Um, no. I can't remember everything that we chatted about but I do remember Michael Palin and silk underwear creeping in somehow, though I hasten to add that the two were not directly related. Not in the manner you're thinking, anyway :)

While waiting for Military-Dave to turn up, Michelle played Three-Blind-Mice for us. On the piano, it wasn't a game. Smarty-pants Chairman-Dave then played Mozart's Sonata in A Major. I haven't got past Chopsticks yet. We tried to get John to play the violin for us but he refused, which was probably a good thing as we didn't have a violin. Air-violin is just not the same as air-guitar.

Military-Dave turned up and off we went. Me, Dave, John and Dave piled into Chairman-Dave's big Land-Rover Discovery, Lesley and Michelle into Michelle's little yellow car. We were taking the Disco for a good reason - our observing site was Combe Gibbet, a rather high hill, with excellent horizons, in the middle of nowhere. We stopped en route to fill up with petrol (Dave's Disco is single-handedly responsible for 50% of the country's petrol consumption) and buy unhealthy food - bars of chocolate and bags of crisps. Michelle was quicker off the mark than me and snuck back to her car with all the tuck while I did the paying. Opinion, in the Disco, was divided as to whether we'd see Michelle and Lesley again that night :)

West we went, down roads that bore close resemblance to cart-tracks. Small branches were falling from trees, which suggested that it might be getting breezy. Trying not to hit a three-legged deer (Lesley swears it was), we pressed onwards and inwards, arriving at the foot of Combe Gibbet about twenty-past- twelve. A public right-of-way goes up to the Gibbet and as Dave and I have been before we knew Michelle's motor wasn't going to get up there this time of year! So, the little yellow car was parked and we squeezed six people into the Disco's four seats and up we went. It was a trifle bumpy and the water in the dips came over the top of the wheels at one point, but Discos care naught for such things and soon we were at the top. It was clear and it was dark and we weren't even out of breath. Hurrah!

It was however windy. Old Salts might have called it a stiff breeze, but to me it was a gale. Getting stuff out of the Disco and stopping it blowing away was fun, but we managed without any (noticed) losses. We then positioned the Disco to act a wind-break - shades of the Messier Marathon! John had intended to set up his SLR to capture some wide-field constellations shots and meteor trails, but the stiff breeze had him think the better of it.

And so, at 12:40, we Happy Few began the Great BAS 2006 Orionid watch. The little devils appeared almost at once and soon we had our synchronized oohing-and-aahing off to a fine tee. Limiting magnitude was about six, even for me! The Milky Way was stunningly bright and we could see colour in many stars without even trying. Even me. Orion's sword was obvious, ditto the Andromeda Galaxy and the Double Cluster, overhead by now, was easy. I wish I'd taken my bins, though the object of the exercise was meteor-watching.

Chocolate was scoffed, tea glugged and Lesley and I devoured most of the crisps. Keeping warm was my excuse, though it really wasn't that cold for an October night on top of a mountain. OK, small hill, but we _were_ on top of it. The horizons are great and it's very dark to the south, so I could see the stars in Lepus almost as soon as they'd risen. Can't do that in Basingstoke!

Meteors continued to appear at a goodly rate, mostly fast and mostly about magnitude three to four I'd say, but there was still a fair smattering of bright ones, including several of negative magnitude. Cloud then rolled in to spoil play, but having got there we decided we were staying and so played musical chairs as we swung chairs and recliners around to follow the mugholes. Wherever we looked a meteor appeared pretty soon, so we figured we were missing quite a few behind the cloud.

By about two-thirty we'd seen 62 meteors. Then there was a lull in activity and Michelle and Lesley were soon making noises about "warm bed" and "sleep", so they, and John, were excused meteor-watching duty. Dave took them back down the hill in the Disco, which meant me and Military-Dave froze to death as the wind battered us and we tried to hang onto whatever we weren't sitting on. Annoyingly we didn't see any meteors! We were itching to tell Dave he'd missed a brilliant fireball, but no such luck :) Maybe the loss of night-vision caused by the headlights had something to with it. Dave soon returned with his mobile wind-break and the three of us continued watching until 03:50 when increasing cloud persuaded us to call it a day. Grand total? 103 Orionids and 15 sporadics for 118 meteors seen. The brightest? About minus four or minus five I'd say. Not bad for three hours.

Combe Gibbet is a great site and maybe we could try a Perseid watch up there next year? It is however about 50 minutes from Basingstoke so the search for a good dark site a little nearer to home continues. If you know of one, please shout up at the next meeting!