July 16-23 Meteors

Talk about a lot of active meteor showers. I had a hard time fitting all of the data in the table below.

Though the weather has still been poor in Tucson we did get a good clear night on July 22 (actually the night of July 21/22) with 24 meteors detected. That night also marked a change in my meteor camera system. I had to replace the outdoor housing because the old one was leaking badly. The change meant repointing the camera and reproducing an astrometric solution. I also took the opportunity to fiddle with the contrast and brightness of the video which should result in more meteors being detected.

The past week saw the start of two of the better showers of the summer, the Perseids (PER) and Southern Delta Aquariids (SDA). The Perseids should be known to most of you as one of the best annual showers. This year they peak on the night of August 12/13. Unfortunately the Moon will be very bright and will hinder any Perseid watching this year.

The other good shower are the Southern Delta Aquariids (SDA). This shower is one of the better showers for Southern Hemisphere observers but are still good for northerners too. The SDAs do not produce a lot of meteors, only ZHRs of 15-20 at their peak versus 60-120 for the Perseids. Still you may notice quite a few SDAs radiating from the area of Aquarius and Capricornus. The Alpha Capricornids (CAP), PAU (Piscis Austrinids) and SIA (Southern Iota Aquariids) are also active from the same region.

There has been some chatter on the meteorobs mailing list about a large number of Psi Cassiopeiids (PCA) detected by the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR). Surprisingly few of these meteors have been detected by visual and video observers. Over the past two nights perhaps 1 or 2 of my 34 detections have come from this shower. This suggests that these meteors are too faint for video (LM ~ +3) and visual (LM ~ +5) observers but not too faint for radar (LM ~ +8). The CMOR data also shows activity from the SDAs and CAPs.

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Obs Date(UT)    Time   TOT SPO ANT PPS SCA CAN CAP JPE PAU PER ODR ZED SDA SIA
SAL 2014-07-23 01h 10m  10  4   0   1   0   -   1   0   0   0   0   0   4   0
SAL 2014-07-22 08h 46m  24  16  1   1   0   -   2   0   0   1   0   1   1   1
SAL 2014-07-21 01h 17m  3   2   0   0   0   0   1   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
SAL 2014-07-20 06h 43m  4   3   0   0   1   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   -   -
SAL 2014-07-19 01h 10m  1   1   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   -   -
SAL 2014-07-18 05h 59m  9   5   0   0   1   0   1   0   0   2   0   -   -   -
SAL 2014-07-17 01h 12m  5   2   0   1   0   0   1   0   0   1   0   -   -   -
SAL 2014-07-16 01h 28m  10  4   1   1   1   1   1   1   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
PPS - Phi Piscids
SCA - Sigma Capricornids
CAN - c Andromedids
CAP - Alpha Capricornids
JPE - July Pegasids
PAU - Piscis Austrinids
PER - Perseids
ODR - Omicron Draconids
ZED - July Zeta Draconids
SDA - Southern Delta Aquariids
SIA - Southern Iota Aquariids