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15/16. 07. 1998.
After a twenty minute walk through the forest we arrived to that night observation site, Bacin near Visnjan (actually a water tank). There was six of us separated into two groups of three. First group (Nikola, Denis and Sinisa) climbed to the top, while the other group (Vanesa, Ivor and Marko) remained on lower plateau. Our main goal was to observe Capricornids, Sagittarids, Aquarids and Perseids. The night was perfectly clear, except for the the Moon that rised around 2 am and few clouds which appeared before dawn, so
we managed to see few meteors of each shower. The actual ZHR was very low, about 2, but that was expected.The new members were on their first observation, so the next morning they asked only one question "Where are we going today?"
16/17. 07. 1998.
After a very cloudy day and evening we were scared that we wont be able to observe meteors, but fortunately somewhere around midnight the sky partially cleared so we grabbed our sleeping bags and started observing. Night was meteor poor, because of high percentage of the clouds.That`s why all members of the group counted around fifteen meteors that were mainly sporadic with few of those belonging to any of summer showers. We were all looking forward to a better night.
17/18. 07. 1998.
Like the first night, the sky was again very clear, waiting for somebody to observe it. Moon was in it’s last quarter so we were speared from it’s interference all the way till 3 am. This was our most successful night so far, everyone counted around twenty-five meteors.These meteors were mainly members of summer showers from which Perseids and Capricornids were in majority. Accept from visual observation we were for the first time using photo camera.
18/19. 07. 1998.
We were watching the sky for about an hour when suddenly a bright streak flashed in the sky. It was a fireball - common name among meteor observers for very bright meteors (magnitude -3 and up). Such meteors are pretty rare so we were really lucky to see it. It was white and yellow in color, its magnitude around -4. After, when we all recovered from the positive shock that the fireball produced we came to a conclusion that its appearance was a reward for all of our work. To conclude, the fireball gave us all a morale boost.
19/20. 07. 1998.
Another successful night is behind us. The four of us were plotting this night from 22:00 UT until 02:00 UT.
The weather and atmosphere conditions were very good again so we saw even more meteors than before. No fireballs this night though but we saw some really beautiful meteors of magnitudes 0 and -1. Most of the meteors were sporadic while some of them belonged to Northern and Southern Delta Aquarids, Capricornids and Perseids.
20/21. 07. 1998.
Because of the tomorrow's excursion to observatory Crni Vrh in Slovenia, which wouldn't allow us to reduce any new data, we decided not to observe this night, and we finished all the job that we couldn't do earlier (data-reduction, reports, homepage etc.)
21/22. 07. 1998.
This was the night after we returned from trip to Slovenia. Until today, we were not really sure whether we were too tired to spot meteors, or there was little activity this night. However, we saw fewer meteors then previous nights, but the activity of Perseids remained constant.
22/23.07.1998.
This night only three most unexperienced of us actually went to observation. The others were busy with data collected in previous nights. The trio successfuly completed the observation, while Marko even managed to plot some meteors.
23/24.07.1998.
Last observing night of this year's VSA. Nikola, Marko, Sinisa and associated Ranko Radonic observed from Bacin, near Visnjan. First few minuts some clouds came from NW, but after that the night was brilliant. Meteors were only counted. We noticed ncreased number of Perseids, as expected. Several bright sporadic meteors of negative magnitude occured made us even happier.
What have we done?
Visual and photographic observations of several minor showers were done. The active showers were: Northern d- Aquarids Southern d- Aquarids Perseids Pisces Austrinids. First three nights Sagittarids Naturaly, most of the seen meteors were sporadics We also noticed increasing of the Perseids and one fireball of the 4m.
