Oct 24/25 Meteors

Carl Hergenrother

The Orionids are still producing a healthy number of meteors. The number of detections from Tucson actually went up when compared with the night before.

More than half of the Tucson (Carl’s camera) detection are Orionids. In San Diego (Bob’s camera), only ~1/3 of the detections are Orionids. Why the difference? On average the Orionids are brighter than Sporadic meteors. The Tucson camera can only see the brightest meteors so a higher percentage of what it sees are Orionids. The San Diego system can spot much fainter meteors, as a result it does a much better job of detecting the many more fainter Sporadics. Now that the Moon is no longer an issue, the San Diego system will be able to detect even more Sporadics.

Obs  Date (UT)   TotTime TOT SPO NTA STA ORI EGE LMI
Carl 2008-10-25  11h 16m  64  25  1   1   34  3   0
Bob  2008-10-25  10h 27m 121  62  8   2   44  3   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
EGE – Epsilon Gemininds
LMI – Leo Minorids

Below is a movie showing all 64 meteors detected by the Tucson system. See how many you can find. Many of the meteors are barely visible and only appear as short streaks. For reference, only the brightest stars are visible. When the video starts you can make out the Cygnus and Pegasus. By the end of the night, the constellations of Perseus, Auriga and Gemini are most evident.

All 64 meteors detected from the Tucson camera on the night of Oct 25 UT.

Published by Carl Hergenrother

I am a professional astronomer specializing in the study of comets, asteroids and meteors. This blog will focus on my professional and amateur work in this field.

4 Comments

  1. Carl,

    Thanks for the effort of posting this movie. You captured some impressive meteors! I’m sure your readers will also appreciate seeing exactly what meteors appear like in your video system in the course of a night.

    Bob

  3. Hi Allison,

    I looks like a meteor to me. It is trailed (elongated or stretched) compared to the meteors in my images because your camera takes longer exposures (15 fps versus 60 fps for mine). You can also see a thin short lived train (or tail) following the meteor.

    I’m not sure what stars are in the field. Where in the sky was your camera pointed? We might be able to determine what meteor shower it belongs to.

    Thanks for the observation.
    – Carl

  4. Carl,
    Thank you for response. The video camera was pointed almost due East and the object was coming from West. We had the tripod setup to film just over the treeline across the street from the house and there were medium size trees, so it was angled above the horizon.
    Allison

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