Nov 19/20 Meteors

Carl Hergenrother

The Leonids are becoming much fewer in number. Still the relatively high number of Sporadic meteors is keeping the nightly totals elevated.

My 2 cameras produced an interesting result last night. The zenith (straight-up) camera found a half-dozen or more meteors that appeared to radiate from a broad area on the Ursa Major/Lynx border. But, the north camera, which also happened to directly image the supposed “radiant” saw nothing from that area. The lack of agreement between the two cameras suggests that either a) this was just a fluke alignment, or b) bad astrometry and these were actually Leonids, or c) there was an unknown shower active last night. Personally I believe explanation ‘a’.

Bob’ notes for the night of Nov 19/20 : “It was clear and transparent all night long. Rates were back up to what was expected. The Northern Taurids were the most active shower surpassing the Leonids.”

Obs  Date(UT)  Time    TOT SPO NTA STA LEO AMO NOO AND OER
TUS  Nov-20   11h52m    52  28  4   3   11  2   2   1   1
SDG  Nov-20   11h55m    66  44  9   -   6   2   4   0   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)
LEO – Leonids
AMO – Alpha Monocerotids
NOO – November Orionids
AND – Andromedids
OER – Omicron Eridanids

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. Saw a line of lighted debris(?) on Nov 19 at 10:15 CST passing from east to west with a nucleus of rotating rocks(?)trailing lighted debris(?). Metairie La. approx 30n/90w. Clear moonless sky. Took approx 2 – 3 min to cross. Used 8/40 binoculars. A second almost identical sighting occurred a few minutes later. Stayed out til 11pm but no more sighting.
    Also on Nov 6th a single irregular shaped object rectangular shape brown in color came over lighted from Metairie lights or illuminated with a reddish light or hot spot. 1 am. was looking for meteor shower as predicted by weather channel.Could not tell how high or how big as I used my 8/40 binoculars. Was big (about half of in my field of view) in 8/40 extra wide angle (498ft @ 1000yds)What am I seeing?

  2. My husband and I saw what we think was a comet last night at about 5pm. We live in Massapequa NY. Was there a comet that could be seen last night? It was very bright with a rather long tail.

  3. Well i saw a comet or something really big in the sky it must have been about 11:00 to 11:30pm on Saturday the 21st November. I am from Botswana i was with 5 of my friends including my girlfriend. This object turned night into day for a second or 2, it was a blue bright white balll with a blue tail that turned green and orange. It was really scary at the moment because it came out of nowhere. We still saw nothing on the news can anyone tell me what that was ,because it looked like it crashed somewhere..

  4. Well i saw a comet or something really big in the sky it must have been about 11:00 to 11:30pm on Saturday the 21st November. I am from Botswana i was with 5 of my friends including my girlfriend. This object turned night into day for a second or 2, it was a blue bright white ball with a blue tail that turned green and orange. It was really scary at the moment because it came out of nowhere. We still saw nothing on the news can anyone tell me what that was ,because it looked like it crashed somewhere..

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