August 18/19 Meteors

Carl Hergenrother

Another clear night… The Moon is starting to be a problem in the evening hours. For the rest of the week the Moon will set before the prime meteor watching hours in the early morning.

We are near the peak time of the Kappa Cygnids. This shower produces some of the most notable meteors, often ending with a bright flash. Last night didn’t produce any. Maybe we’ll see more tonight.

Obs  Date(UT)      Time    TOT SPO ANT PER SDA ERI KCG AUD
SAL3 2010-08-19   08h 11m   32  20  4   4   0   2   0   2
ALLS 2010-08-19   07h 35m   10  4   0   5   0   1   0   0

SAL3 - SALSA3 camera in Tucson (Carl Hergenrother)
ALLS - Near all-sky camera in Tucson (Carl Hergenrother)
VIST - Visual observations from Tucson (Carl Hergenrother)
SDG - Camera in San Diego operated by Bob Lunsford
Time - 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 - Antihelions
PER - Perseids
SDA - Southern Delta Aquariids
ERI - Eta Eridanids
KCG - Kappa Cygnids
AUD - August Draconids

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.

2 Comments

  1. While taking “night” pictures of Santa Rosa sound in northwest florida.8/18/2010 22:10 CDT I pointed my Nikon 200 with a 12-24 mm lens in a south west direction (210 deg. mag.out over the gulf of mexico) The the camera was set to “program” which allows the camera to set the correct exposure values.
    Upon reviewing the pictures, a comet is seen north of the tail of scorpious and in the middle of the tail stars seems to be a green mass of stars.
    Please, what is this.
    I can E-mail pics to you for study.

    1. Hi Ken,

      Your images sound interesting. You can email them to me at and I’ll take a look at them.

      Often times, these sort of ghost comets are reflections in the optics. Still you never know…

      – Carl

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