August 7/8 to 23/24 Meteors

Hello everyone!

I’m back from a few relaxing weeks visiting family and friends in Italy. Since it has been a few weeks since my last post, I will try to catch up with the latest meteor and comet news.

I debated whether to leave my cameras up and running while I was gone. The MetRec software that I use for meteor detection is more than capable of running autonomously for long stretches of time. If it had been any time of the year other than summer, I would have done that. But August is still hot in Tucson with temps still routinely hitting 100+. Since my computers are located in a non-temperature controlled room that can get very hot, I decided not to push my luck and risk coming home to 2 cooked computers.

This means I missed a great Perseid display (I’ll summarize what others saw in a later post). Luckily Bob Lunsford’s camera was up and running. He was able to catch one of the 2 big Perseid peak nights.

Bob’s notes from the night of August 11/12: “I took my system to dark skies near Alpine, CA to view the Perseid maximum. I managed to record 176 meteors during the 4 hour session. This included a slight outburst near 1am PDT when the Earth crossed particles produced in 1610 from the Perseid parent comet Swift-Tuttle. The counts could have been more had it not been for cirrus clouds present during the first hour of the session and bright moonlight, which was present all 4 hours.”

Obs Date (UT)  TotTime TOT SPO ANT CAP PAU SDA PER KCG
SDG 2009-08-24 08h 08m  50  43  6               1   0
SDG 2009-08-23 02h 41m  5   5   0               0   0
SDG 2009-08-21 06h 55m  33  24  2               6   1
SDG 2009-08-20 03h 00m  3   2   1               0   0
SDG 2009-08-18 03h 00m  5   3   0               1   1
SDG 2009-08-17 02h 30m  6   3   1               2   0
SDG 2009-08-12 04h 02m 176  21  3   1       9  142  0
SDG 2009-08-09 04h 00m  9   4   0   0   1   0   3   1
TUS 2009-08-08 07h 49m  17  8   0   0   0   1   8   0
SDG 2009-08-08 08h 24m  40  24  0   0   1   3   12

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
CAP – Alpha Capricornids
PAU – Piscids Australids
SDA – Southern Delta Aquariids
PER – Perseids
KCG – Kappa Cygnids