Mar 12/13 to 16/17 Meteors

Meteor rates continue to be low. This is not surprising since March suffers from a lack of major showers and the lowest Sporadic rates of the year.

Last night (Mar 16/17) was interesting. Usually my system rarely sees any meteors before 1 am. But last night, 7 meteors were detected before 1 am. Many of them were long-lived meteors radiating from the anti-solar or antihelion part of the sky.

From Bob’s notes for last night: “I had a late start tonight. I managed to catch the brightest Gamma Normid ever for me, roughly in the 0 to -2 magnitude range. It was short and far from the radiant.”

Obs  Date (UT)   TotTime TOT SPO ANT GNO
TUS  2009-03-17  08h 31m  13  10  3   0
SDG  2009-03-17  06h 40m  18  16  1   1
TUS  2009-03-16  10h 25m  7   6   1   0
TUS  2009-03-15  10h 23m  7   6   1   0
TUS  2009-03-14  09h 51m  8   7   1   0
TUS  2009-03-13  01h 17m  3   3   0   0

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)
ANT – Antihelions
GNO – Gamma Normids