Oct 22/23 Meteors

Orionid activity has not let up at all. Last night’s rates are comparable to the past 3 nights. The graph below presents the number of Orionids my 2 camera SALSA system detected throughout each night. Though there may have been sky brightness and transparency difference from night-to-night, the nights were clear when the Orionid radiant was above the horizon allowing for a realistic measurement of the night-to-night variability in activity. [Note, there were  clouds on the 19th so its numbers are probably too low.]

Visual reports to the IMO’s real-time page, still show activity varying between a ZHR of 25 and 45 meteors per hour. Some of the variation is undoubtably due to different observers and observing conditions, but some of the variation may also be real as the Earth encounters dust streams of different intensities. Rates should start falling by tonight.

Bob’s report from the Mojave : “My last night from the Mojave Desert was plagued by cirrus clouds and equipment problems. Dead batteries limited my video recording to only two hours. Luckily this two hour period was cloud free.”

Obs Date(UT)TotTime TOT SPO NTA STA ORI OUI SSA EGE LMI
TUS Oct-23  06h 43m 142  27  3   1  106  1   1   0   3
SDG Oct-23  02h 00m  88  17  1   2   60  0   -   2   6

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/STA – Northern and Southern Taurids (includes Antihelions)
ORI – Orionids
ZTA – Zeta Taurids
OUI – October Ursae Minorids
SSA – Sigma Arietids
EGE – Epsilon Geminids
LMI – Leonis Minorids