The maximum for this year’s Leonids shower should have taken place late this morning a few hours after sunrise here in AZ. So based on last night’s results I have only one word to describe the Leonids maximum, at least video-wise, and that word is ‘yawn!’. When the SALSA3 camera picked up 8 Leonids back on the night of Nov 11/12 I got real excited about a good display for this year. As it turned out, none of the subsequent nights really did much better. Still except during dust trail crossing years, the Leonids only produce 10-20 meteors per hour. That’s 10-20 per hour if you live under very dark skies. For most of us living in light polluted areas, rates are more like 3-8 per hour. So to be honest, I never really understand why every year there are news stories (for instance, the Leonids are on the front page of Yahoo News right now) telling the public to see what is really just a good minor shower most years. It would be much better to wait a month for a real high rate shower like December’s Geminids.
Last night marked the 53rd consecutive night with a meteor detection by the SALSA3 camera. The current forecast calls for the slight possibility of rain this weekend so we’ll see if the streak can live on.
Obs Date(UT) Time TOT SPO NTA STA ORI LEO AND NOO OER AMO SAL3 2010-11-17 11h 49m 28 15 2 2 - 7 0 0 2 0 ALLS 2010-11-17 12h 18m 22 11 1 1 - 7 0 1 1 0 SAL3 2010-11-16 11h 22m 31 13 6 3 - 5 0 1 2 1 ALLS 2010-11-16 11h 36m 21 8 1 2 - 9 0 1 0 0 SAL3 2010-11-15 06h 41m 19 8 4 2 - 4 0 1 0 0 ALLS 2010-11-15 12h 00m 13 9 0 0 0 3 0 0 1 0 SAL3 2010-11-14 11h 45m 16 11 1 1 2 0 1 0 0 - ALLS 2010-11-14 10h 07m 5 3 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 - SAL3 2010-11-13 12h 13m 26 18 4 1 1 1 1 0 - - ALLS 2010-11-13 12h 13m 16 12 3 0 0 1 0 0 - - SAL3 2010-11-12 11h 21m 36 16 9 1 2 8 0 0 - - ALLS 2010-11-12 11h 36m 28 20 3 1 1 3 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 LEO - Leonids AND - Andromedids
The Transient Sky - Comets, Asteroids, Meteors 