Those readers that have been following this blog for awhile know that I usually post daily summaries of the meteors detected during the previous night. The meteors are observed with 2 video camera systems, one located in Tucson and the other in San Diego. For the past couple of weeks these daily summaries have become weekly summaries. There are 2 reasons for this; one, meteor activity is at an annual low and, two, the weather has been horrible for observing.
This week sees the start of 2 showers. The Pi Puppids are a very minor shower created by Comet Grigg-Skjellerup. Though the shower only produces a few meteors per hour, it experienced much higher rates in 1977 and 1982.
The Lyrids can either be considered the weakest of the major showers or the strongest of the minor showers. Rates of 15-20 meteors per hour should be visible during the night of its peak on April 22. More info on this year’s Lyrids will be posted this weekend.
More on these 2 showers can be found in this previous post.
Obs Date (UT) TotTime TOT SPO ANT PPU LYR TUS 2009-04-16 09h 11m 5 5 0 0 0 TUS 2009-04-14 08h 20m 2 2 0 TUS 2009-04-13 07h 50m 4 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
PPU – Pi Puppids
LYR – Lyrids
The Transient Sky - Comets, Asteroids, Meteors 