July 31 – Aug 5 Meteors

The monsoon wiped out the first three night of August. Happily, these clouds did bring a bit of rain.

The nights of August 4-6 UT were very disappointing for my meteor detection network. Early August is a busy time for meteor watching with the Perseids (PER) ramping up and the various Aquarius (SDA,SIA)/Capricornus (CAP) showers still producing. I fully expected to be detecting many 10s of meteors per night rather than the lowly 20-21. At that rate, I wasn’t detecting any more meteors than back in late June.

Turns out it was a bit of an upgrade issue. The night of July 31 saw me using the newest version of MetRec (the automatic meteor detection software I use). At first I thought my camera was on its last legs as these cameras are known to loss sensitivity with time. As it turns out, one of the configuration files for MetRec got confused resulting in the software shutting down 2-3 hours before dawn. Since the last hours of the night see the highest meteor rates, it really put a dent in detections. As of August 7 UT, the problem has been fixed.

Obs Date(UT)    Time   TOT SPO ANT CAP JPE PAU PER SDA ERI ATR BCA KCG BAR
SAL 2014-08-06 06h 20m  20  9   2   0   -   1   3   3   0   1   -   0   1
SAL 2014-08-05 06h 27m  20  8   2   2   0   0   1   2   0   2   1   2   -
SAL 2014-08-04 06h 06m  21  10  0   1   1   1   2   3   0   0   0   -   -
SAL 2014-08-03 00h 00m             Clouds/rain all night
SAL 2014-08-02 00h 00m             Clouds/rain all night
SAL 2014-08-01 00h 00m             Clouds/rain all night
SAL 2014-07-31 03h 35m  10  5   0   0   0   0   3   2   0   0   0   -   -
                  also no PPS or SIA were seen over the 3 nights

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
CAP - Alpha Capricornids
JPE - July Pegasids
PAU - Piscis Austrinids
PER - Perseids
SDA - Southern Delta Aquariids
SIA - Southern Iota Aquariids
ERI - Eta Eridanids
ATR - Alpha Triangulids
BCA - Beta Cassiopeiids
KCG - Kappa Cygnids
BAR - Beta Arietids