SHOWER OF POWER METEOR WATCHERS PURSUE THEIR HOBBY WITH ASTRONOMICAL INTEREST

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 2, 1993                   TAG: 9301010130
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long
SHOWER OF POWER METEOR WATCHERS PURSUE THEIR HOBBY WITH ASTRONOMICAL INTEREST
AROUND midnight on Sunday, Mark Davis will take up a spot in the Frances Marion National Forest, about 30 miles northeast of Charleston, S.C.
He will kick back in a lounge chair, snuggle into his sleeping bag and turn his eyes to the sky, focusing on the north-northeast. He will study the sky in three or four periods of 60 to 90 minutes each, counting all the meteors he sees.
He'll break only a couple of times for maybe five or 10 minutes. He'll stretch his legs, drink some coffee. He expects to be alone.
"It's hard to get anybody to stay up all night," he says.
Davis, 35, a former resident of the New River Valley, is a meteor counter. He takes notes on the year's meteor showers and sends his findings to the International Meteor Organization in Belgium, the American Meteor Society in Florida and the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers in California.
Sunday, he'll be counting the meteors of the Quadrantid shower, which is expected to peak after midnight, give or take a day.
Quadrantid, an annual event, may produce up to 80 meteors per hour - a decent figure, as these things go. Most will be visible after midnight, when the Earth turns its dark side toward the onrushing meteors, like a car driving into a snowstorm.
Moonset will be at 3:40 a.m., with the best viewing between then and the glow that will precede the 7:30 sunrise, says Frank Baratta, president of the Roanoke Valley Astronomical Society.
The meteors will radiate, or emanate, from the north-northeast, an area of sky between four constellations - Bootes, Hercules, Draco and the Big Dipper's handle.
The Quadrantid is named for a former constellation, Quadrans Muralis, which means "wall quadrant," Baratta says.
The shower will feature short, fast, blue, white or yellow meteors with short, rather than long, trails, says Britt Rossie, director of the Hopkins Planetarium at the Science Museum of Western Virginia in Roanoke.
It has a brief lifespan, from Jan. 1 to Jan. 6.
Also known as falling or shooting stars, meteors are the streaks of light that occur in the night sky when tiny pieces of stone or metal enter the Earth's atmosphere and vaporize. The falling objects are meteoroids, most of which burn up in the atmosphere. Those that reach the surface of the Earth or another heavenly body are called meteorites.
Meteors can be of two kinds. Sporadic meteors can occur on any night and from any direction. Shower meteors consist of numerous meteors that enter the atmosphere at about the same time, and often are associated with comets. Some return each year. Some appear irregularly and some are seen only once.
It takes no elaborate gear to watch a meteor shower, though at this time of year it is wise to dress for warmth.
"All you really need to do is go out after midnight," says Davis, who works as a National Park Service ranger at Fort Sumter, S.C. "Face toward the radiant, off toward the northeast. Scan the sky and look for meteors to appear.
"The only equipment you need is a blanket or sleeping bag to stay warm with, and a lounge chair or something."
You never know how meteor-watching will turn out. The hourly average might be 80, but 30 of those might appear in three minutes, leaving some long, fruitless viewing spans to follow. Patience is a must.
Then again, you never know when a fireball might appear, brighter than any star or planet and sometimes accompanied by an audible explosion.
Davis has watched some 150 meteor showers in the past five years, including the Geminid in December 1989, which was "almost a storm."
He prefers it to other forms of astronomy "because it's a relaxing type of observing. When you're looking with a telescope, you're always fine-tuning and making minute observations. With this, you just lie back and enjoy the show."
More information about this and other celestial events can be obtained from the Roanoke Valley Astronomical Society. It meets on the third Monday of each month at 7:30 p.m. at the Science Museum of Western Virginia in Roanoke's Center in the Square. The meetings are open to the public.
Annual dues are $15, or $7.50 for students. The society has more than 70 members, Baratta says.
"We say you only need an interest in the night sky and to want to learn more. Members run from the very brand new to those who own and make their own telescopes."
His number is 774-5651.
Baratta makes numerous public presentations for the society and finds people fascinated by the night sky.
"I show them the moon, Saturn and its rings, the moons in Jupiter. People have never seen that. They go nuts about it," he says.
By day, he is a compliance officer with the Central Piedmont Private Industry Council in Rocky Mount. His interest in star-gazing began in childhood and redeveloped about a dozen years ago, when a friend of his started pointing out heavenly objects on a trip to the beach.
Now, meteors interest him less than deep-sky observing. "The deep sky is beyond the solar system," he says. "Looking at a cluster of stars in the galaxy at remote distance, looking at other galaxies."
On a Sunday evening in early December, when hordes of other people were watching the Washington Redskins defeat the Dallas Cowboys, he and a friend were staring into space from the darkness of a farm in Floyd County.
"It becomes a passion," he says.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB