Oct 24/25/26 Meteors

Carl Hergenrother

After peaking in intensity last week, the Orionids are slowly winding down for 2009. Rates are about half to a third of what they were at the peak. This is true for both video observers and visual observers.

Bob’s notes for the past 2 nights : “Listed below is data from the past 3 nights obtained from home. On the 24th skies clouded up after only 2 hours of observing. The remaining two nights were mostly clear except for some scattered cirrus.”

Obs Date(UT)TotTime TOT SPO NTA STA ORI OUI ETT EGE LMI
TUS Oct-26  11h 19m  93  35  4   1   47  0   1   0   5
SDG Oct-26  10h 43m  83  29  2   2   43  0   -   2   1
TUS Oct-25  07h 37m  38  13  3   4   16  1   1   0   0
SDG Oct-25  10h 09m 123  31  7   9   64  1   -   9   2

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
OUI – October Ursae Minorids
ETT – Eta Taurids
EGE – Epsilon Geminids
LMI – Leonis Minorids

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.

2 Comments

  1. Interesting story developing about a “mystery” object that’s been picked up by several observatories looking for near Earth objects… it seems to be on a 31 day Earth orbit and will next fly-by at approx 0.2 lunar distance on 29th October.

    Object designation currently: 9U01FF6

    http://www.spaceweather.com/

    1. Hi Chris,

      Yep, I’m watching this one closely. It’ll probably end up being something man-made (which as a space program buff, is still cool) but a natural object can’t be ruled out yet. The orbit dynamics people will be able to tell when it is re-observed in a few weeks.

      There has been a few cases of man-made Apollo era hardware returning to Earth after spending decades in heliocentric orbit. Then there was the case of 6R9DB10 = 2006 RH120, a ~2 meter asteroid that was temporarily captured into a pseudo-Earth for a year or so.

      Cool stuff…
      – Carl

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