Oct 14/15 and the Tau Ursa Majorids

The bright Full Moon was still no match for the 25 meteors detected last night.

During the previous night, I noted that a number of meteors were seen to originate from near the radiant of the Tau Ursa Majorids. Last night there is no doubt that 4 Tau Ursa Majorids (TUM) were spotted. The TUM is a shower which was recently identified by Sirko Molau in video data. The shower is visible from Oct 15 to Oct 22 with a peak around Oct 16. The shower is a minor one and visual observers would have a hard time recognizing it. A plot of last night’s 4 TUMs and their radiant is posted below. On this plot it appears that 5 meteors may be TUMs (I’m not sure why the software I use is only counted 4). The radiant derived from my data (where the lines cross) matches well with the predicted radiant (the circle with an X in the middle). The radiant is located in front of the bowl part of the Big Dipper.

Obs  Date (UT)   TotTime TOT SPO NTA STA ORI TUM EGE
Carl 2008-10-15  10h 58m  25  13  1   1   5   4   1
Bob  2008-10-15  10h 47m  44  30  2   3   5   2   2

TotTime – Total amount of time each camera looked for meteors
TOT – total number of meteors detected
SPO – Sporadics (meteors not affiliated with any particular meteor shower)
NTA – Northern Taurids
STA – Southern Taurids
ORI – Orionids
TUM – Tau Ursa Majorids
EGE – Epsilon Gemininds