Oct 17/18 Meteors

[Note: This was supposed to be posted 2 days ago. For some reason it wasn’t. So here it is, if a bit late.]

This is the 8th month of operations for my Tucson camera system. Last night marked a personal record with 40 meteors detected. My previous record was 37 meteors on the night of July 28/29 during the peak of the Southern Delta Aquarid shower. For those wondering why I didn’t detect more meteors during the peak of the Perseids in mid-August, those nights were plagued by clouds.

Over in San Diego, Bob’s camera picked up twice as many Orionids. In fact, half of Bob’s detections are Orionids.

The number of Orionids should continue to be elevated for the next few days. According to the many visual observers, rates under the darkest skies have only reached a few Orionids per hour. With rates predicted to peak at a few tens of meteors per hour, we may see many more meteors in the nights ahead.

Obs  Date (UT)   TotTime TOT SPO NTA STA ORI TUM EGE
Carl 2008-10-18  11h 03m  40  18  2   4   15  0   1
Bob  2008-10-18  10h 54m  61  18  1   8   31  1   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