May 1-10 Meteors

The end of last month experienced the peak of the major Lyrid meteor shower. The first week or so of May is seeing some signifiant activity from the Eta Aquariids (ETA). The ETAs are actually debris from Comet Halley. They are the sister shower to October’s Orionids (ORI). So if you’ve been seeing some long bright meteors during your early morning walks the past few mornings, you’ve actually been seeing small pieces of Halley’s comet.

The IMO Live ZHR page presents reports from visual observers from all around the world. They have been observing a good shower with ZHRs of ~50. It’s too bad the radiant is only observable for an hour or so prior to sunup from the the NH.

The ETAs were predicted to peak around May 7 UT and the IMO reports confirm this. My meteor camera totals disagree as the number of ETAs has continued to climb even though we are 2-3 days past the peak. Perhaps the number of bright ETAs (which are the only ones my camera can detect) are still increasing even though the total number of meteors (bright and faint) peaked a few nights ago. Regardless, the ETAs should wind down from here on out.

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Obs  Date(UT)      Time    TOT SPO ANT ETA ABO PBO XLI ELY SOP
SAL  2014-05-10   08h 58m   23  11  0   11  -   -   0   1   0
SAL  2014-05-09   08h 55m   23  8   2   11  -   -   1   0   1
SAL  2014-05-08   09h 07m   17  9   1   7   -   -   0   0   0
SAL  2014-05-07   06h 16m   12  4   1   7   -   -   0   0   0
SAL  2014-05-06   09h 11m   12  3   2   7   -   -   0   0   0
SAL  2014-05-05   06h 49m   5   3   0   1   -   -   0   0   0
SAL  2014-05-04   09h 14m   16  9   2   5   0   0   0   0   0
SAL  2014-05-03   08h 42m   12  5   0   5   0   0   2   0   -
SAL  2014-05-02   08h 31m   25  14  4   5   1   0   1   -   -
SAL  2014-05-01   09h 06m   15  14  0   1   0   0   0   -   -

SAL - SALSA3 camera in Tucson (Carl Hergenrother)
VIS - Visual observations from Tucson (Carl Hergenrother)
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
ETA - Eta Aquariids
ABO - Alpha Bootids
PBO - Phi Bootids
XLI - April Chi Librids
ELY - Eta Lyrids
SOP - Southern May Ophiuchids