Oct 27/28 Meteors

Carl Hergenrother

For the 2nd night in a row, enhanced activity from the Beta Cancrids has been observed. Note, that any obvious activity from the Beta Cancrids can be classified as enhanced due to its usually very low rates. Two nights ago, 8 Beta Cancrids were seen over Tucson with only a single one over San Diego. Last night, 5 were seen over San Diego. We’ll never know how many were over Tucson due to the clouds.

From Bob’s notes : “After a cloudy day and even some sprinkles, the sky began to clear near dusk. During the evening hours there were still lots of cirrus and occasional cumulus clouds floating by. I decided to hold off recording to see if the sky improved. At midnight the sky was still sub par. At 3:15am I woke to totally clear skies and no moon. The ran the camera the remainder of the morning and managed to record 44 meteors in just under 3 hours. The Beta Cancrids were surprisingly active with 5 shower member recorded.”

Obs Date (UT)  TotTime TOT SPO NTA STA ORI BCN ETT LMI
TUS 2009-10-28 00h 00m  Clouds all night long
SDG 2009-10-28 02h 52m  44  18  2   3   15  5   1   -

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
BCN – Beta Cancrids
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.

4 Comments

  1. Im in the hills in clovis, ca. it is dark, and towards the eastern sky, there is a bright light, much bigger and brighter than any star, and it also has red and blue lights or auras. it does not seem to be moving, however, the lights seem to be pulsating.. Anyone else see this?

  2. Observed large orange/red streaking object at 8:45PM while at Lone Pine Camp ground – just West by 6 miles of Lone Pine, CA. Was very bright, seemed to pass almost directly over Mt Whitney. I guess I’d call it a “shooting star” but it was amazingly bright. Wonder if it was recorded or observed by others?

  3. I live in Southern Middle Tennessee and on October 28, I was in the backyard about an hour after sundown and I just happened to look up and see very bright white light jot across the sky and dissappear. From my perspective, it was about the size of a golfball and moved east to west for about 300 yards(which is probably a thousand miles or something actually). I was just curious if this could have been from the same event. I have never seen one quite this large and so bright. It was amazing.

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