The monsoon rains returned yesterday evening. Luckily the clouds dissipated by 10pm and stayed away for the remainder of the night. Unfortunately the next few nights may not be as lucky though the forecast calls for another clearing trend by early next week.
Meteor rates were healthy once again last night. This shouldn’t be surprising with the Perseids (PER) still building strength and a slew of minor showers also contributing to the mix. One difference from the night before was a lack of Beta Perseids (BPE) compared to 6 being seen last night and 2 the night before that. Then again do my cameras really see any Beta Perseids the past few nights. This shower produced an outburst back on August 7, 1935 and hasn’t done much since. It is possible that what MetRec is identifying as Beta Perseids are really just Perseids with bad positions. The Beta Perseid and Perseid radiants are within a few degrees of each other so confusion is possible.
Obs Date(UT) Time TOT SPO ANT CAP PAU PER SDA AUP BPE ERI KCG SAL3 2010-08-06 06h47m 34 14 1 2 0 12 4 1 0 0 0 ALLS 2010-08-06 07h39m 17 3 0 0 0 11 3 0 0 0 0 SAL3 - SALSA3 camera in Tucson (Carl Hergenrother) ALLS - Near all-sky camera in Tucson (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 CAP - Alpha Capricornids PAU - Piscis Austrinids PER - Perseids SDA - Southern Delta Aquariids AUP - August Piscids BPE - Beta Perseids ERI - Eta Eridanids KCG - Kappa Cygnids
The Transient Sky - Comets, Asteroids, Meteors 