Nov 7/8 Meteors and Lots of Taurid Fireballs

The nights have been nice and clear here in the southwest US. My Tucson camera continues to detect over 2 dozen meteors a night while Bob’s camera in San Diego is routinely finding ~100 meteors a night, give or take 20 or so. The Orionids are officially over, at least according to the International Meteor Organization. Analysis of video data by Sirko Molau finds that the Orionids may continue till November 21. Even if they do their rates will be very low. Now we wait for the start of the Leonids in the next few days.

The Taurids continue to produce a number of bright fireballs (meteors brighter than Venus or magnitude -4) every night. The American Meteor Society (AMS) collects and documents fireball observations. If you would like to submit your observations for use by the scientific community, the reporting form can be found at

http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball/report.html.

The form is very basic and no knowledge of astronomy is needed to fill it out. A listing of all of the fireballs that have been reported to the AMS in 2008 can also be found at their site. Many of the fireballs reported to this blog over the past 2 months are already included.

Obs  Date (UT)   TotTime TOT SPO NTA STA
TUS  2008-11-08  11h 36m  26  18  3   5
SDG  2008-11-08  11h 22m  84  65  6   13

TUS – Camera in Tucson operated by Carl Hergenrother
SDG – Camera in San Diego operated by Bob Lunsford
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