Sept 8/9 Meteors

Carl Hergenrother

In yesterday’s post I mentioned the possibility of activity from the September Perseids. Last year this minor shower put on a nice show and though there have been no studies that suggest a repeat this year (actually I’m not sure there were any studies conducted on the Sept Perseids) one never knows.

I have seen no reports of any enhanced activity from the September Perseids last night. Still, there were reports of quite a few bright meteors.

Here in Tucson the night started off with lots of thunderstorm activity. Most of the night was cloudy until the around 3 am when it cleared up enough to spot some meteors. Though clouds and a bright Moon really play havoc on meteor observing, they can make for some nice photos. Below are 2 bright meteors that were picked up by each of my meteor cameras. The first is a rather bright meteor, perhaps bright enough to be considered a fireball, that was seen behind the clouds. As you can tell from the bright mass of clouds in the right side of the image, the Moon was also in the field. It was seen at 3:38 am over Tucson.

20090909_1038

The second meteor was observed from my north facing camera so the Moon is out of view. By this time (5:05 am), the clouds were gone. Neither of these meteors or any of the other 8 I detected appear to be associated with the September Perseids or any other shower.

20090909_1205
Bright sporadic meteor over Tucson at 12:05 UT (5:05 am) on Sept 9, 2009.
Obs Date (UT)   TotTime  TOT SPO ANT AUR SPE
TUS 2009-09-09  02h 15m   10  10  0   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
AUR – Aurigids
SPE – September Perseids

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.

9 Comments

  1. Tonight at around 940 I saw a star slowly moving across the sky with what seemed like a trail of very faint white behind it and at first i thought maybe it was a plane but there were no flashes or colors, just looked like a star. Then after about 10 seconds started to move farther away, as it disappeared another star the same size moved across the sky in the same direction and seemly on the same path and did the exact same thing, went across the sky then gradually out and disappeared…What is this I saw? It was pretty amazing to see.

    1. We say the same thing here in wi at the same time very good ? the first one look like it had a tail that was shaped like a hook. they were going west to east. Very stange and cool I would like to know what that was also.

  2. I too seen the “hooked” shape tail that followed a slow shooting star. I was awesome..I would like to to hear any info on it please e-mail me.

  3. We saw it here too in Northern Illinois. Traveling west to east, first one had a hooked tail, second one did not. What were we seeing?

  4. i saw it too with my friends here in maine and we freaked thinking it was a ufo,lol!if anyone heares let me know.

    1. It was quite amazing here in Northern Wis also would sure like to know what the two traveling lights were.

  5. I asked this ? on yahoo anwsers and the responce was that it is the space station and shuttle. They thought the hook was the space station doing a water dump.??????? sounds good I guess.

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