June 18/19 to 29/30 Meteors

This post brings my video meteor observations up till the end of June. The end of June was hit-or-miss in Tucson. Though the monsoon was still far to the south and east, it was close enough to spread cirrus over southern Arizona from time to time. As a result, many nights were hindered by persistent cloudiness.

The only “big” event of note was a predicted increase in the rates of the June Bootids (JBO) on the evening of June 23. This shower usually produces very low rates of meteors though on occasion it can put on quite a show (1916, 1998, 2004). This year the Earth made a rather distant approach to a number of dust trails produced by Comet Pons-Winnecke in 1819, 1825, 1830 and 1836. Coincidentally, 1819 was the year of Pons-Winnecke’s discovery.

Peter Jenniskens reported on CBET 2357 that European and American observers did detect a small increase in the rates of the June Bootids. Still even at its best rates were only 5 per hour and most people would have seen much less due to the nearly Full Moon. Here in Tucson most of the activity was over by the time the sky darkened. Anyway the clouds were in force that night so I wasn’t able to detect any JBOs near the peak though I did detect a solitary JBO a night earlier.

Obs  Date(UT)      Time    TOT SPO ANT JBO DPI FOP
TUS  2010-06-30   00h19m    1   1   0   0   -   0
TUS  2010-06-29   07h38m    7   6   1   0   -   0
TUS  2010-06-28   03h29m    9   8   1   0   -   0
TUS  2010-06-27   07h50m    8   7   1   0   -   -
TUS  2010-06-26   00h00m    Clouds ...
TUS  2010-06-25   00h50m    2   2   0   0   0   -
TUS  2010-06-24   02h09m    4   2   2   0   0   -
TUS  2010-06-23   07h48m    15  11  3   1   0   -
TUS  2010-06-22   07h49m    12  12  0   -   -   -
TUS  2010-06-21   07h49m    14  12  2   -   -   -
TUS  2010-06-20   07h49m    13  12  1   -   -   -
TUS  2010-06-19   07h48m    16  13  3   -   -   -

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)
ANT - Antihelion
JBO - June Bootids
DPI - Delta Piscids
FOP - f Ophiuchids