Nov 9/10/11/12 Meteors

Rates appear lower than usual. The reason is the persistent cloud cover over the American southwest. The cirrus is thin enough that the brighter meteors have been visible.

The Taurids continue to produce a few video meteors a night. Surprisingly the Orionids still account for a sizable fraction of detected meteors. As for November’s main shower, the Leonids are still showing low activity. This will change by early next week.

Bob’ notes for the night of Nov 9/10 : “I was only able to record during the last two hours of the night. Still, I managed to record 21 meteors.”

Night of Nov 10/11 : “It was cloudy all night long with varying layers of high clouds. At times you could see some of the brightest stars but most of the night the sky was blank. Under these conditions only 12 meteors were recorded.”

Night of Nov 11/12 : “High clouds continue to stream over the San Diego area. There were stars visible at dusk but the skies worsened as the night progressed. I had to quit recording near 1:30am PST as the sky became totally overcast. At 4:45:51 (8:45:51) I recorded the brightest fireball yet captured by my camera. It was a member of the Southern Taurid shower with an estimated brightest near -10.”

Below is an image of the -10 magnitude Southern Taurid imaged by Bob over San Diego.

Obs Date(UT)TotTime TOT SPO NTA STA ORI AND LEO
TUS Nov-12  10h 28m  15  8   3   1   0   2   1
SDG Nov-12  07h 00m  9   3   3   3   0   0   0
TUS Nov-11  11h 35m  32  18  0   3   7   0   4
SDG Nov-11  11h 33m  12  7   2   1   1   1   0
TUS Nov-10  09h 13m  31  15  5   2   5   1   3
SDG Nov-10  02h 01m  21  16  1   0   1   1   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
AND – Andromedids
LEO – Leonids