Oct 28/29 to Nov 5/6 Meteors and the Lack of Any ‘Hartley-ids’

The current streak of consecutive nights with a meteor detection is up to 41 now. And with no storm systems in the forecast the end of the streak is no where in sight.

Still some nights do experience clouds. Two nights ago, for example, was hampered by thin cirrus for the entire night which resulted in only half the number of expected meter detections.

The Orionids were still going strong back on Oct 28/29 but have declined to a light sprinkle. Luckily the Leonids are starting up and last night saw a total of 5 Leonids detected between the two cameras.

As mentioned in the previous Meteor posting, there has been talk in the media about a possible ‘Hartley-id’ meteor shower. These meteors would have been produced by Comet Hartley 2 which passed within 12 million miles of Earth 2 weeks ago. A quick look at my data over the past week shows no evidence of any shower radiating from the region around the constellation of Cygnus where the ‘Hartley-id’ radiant should be located. Other video meteor observers such as Chris Peterson (Colorado) and Garry Dymond (Newfoundland and Labrador) also detected no ‘Hartley-id’ activity. The lack of any observational evidence agrees with theoretical work done by Jeremie Vaubaillon which suggests that any meteors released by Hartley 2 over its past few returns would miss Earth by ~0.06 AU. This distance matches the current miss distance between the Earth’s and Hartley 2’s orbit.

Obs  Date(UT)      Time    TOT SPO NTA STA ORI ETT BCN LEO AND
SAL3 2010-11-06   11h 34m   26  14  2   2   5   -   -   3   0
ALLS 2010-11-06   11h 54m   5   2   1   0   0   -   -   2   0
SAL3 2010-11-05   11h 32m   17  11  2   0   4   -   -   0   0
ALLS 2010-11-05   12h 01m   10  7   0   0   3   -   -   0   0
SAL3 2010-11-04   11h 20m   32  19  2   4   1   4   2
ALLS 2010-11-04   12h 00m   9   5   1   0   1   0   2
SAL3 2010-11-03   11h 29m   31  15  4   5   3   1   3
ALLS 2010-11-03   11h 58m   10  8   1   0   1   0   0
SAL3 2010-11-02   10h 55m   21  12  0   5   3   0   1
ALLS 2010-11-02   11h 09m   7   4   0   0   1   1   1
SAL3 2010-11-01   11h 17m   39  20  2   4   10  1   2
ALLS 2010-11-01   11h 30m   7   4   0   0   3   0   0
SAL3 2010-10-31   10h 38m   35  20  2   4   7   1   1
SAL3 2010-10-30   09h 59m   40  20  1   4   7   1   1
ALLS 2010-10-30   10h 12m   16  9   1   0   5   0   1
SAL3 2010-10-29   11h 09m   41  21  3   4   12  0   1
ALLS 2010-10-29   11h 19m   18  10  2   0   6   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  
NTA - Northern Taurids
STA - Southern Taurids 
ORI - Orionids
ETT - Eta Taurids
BCN - Beta Cancrids
LEO - Leonids
AND - Andromedids