August 9/10 Meteors

The plan was to get myself outside last night and start my 2015 Perseids visual observing campaign. Unfortunately, there were other showers going on in Tucson with rain occurring off and on all night long. My SALSA3 camera system was running and did manage to pick up 3 meteors between the clouds. In short, I can’t personally add much to what the Perseids were up to last night.

Luckily it can’t be cloudy everywhere and others were able to observe the Perseids. Observers from around the world reported observations to the International Meteor Organization. These reports show a shower that is already producing ~25 Perseids per hour. This number comes with the caveat that it is valid for those observing from very dark skies, with no obstructions to their vision and the Perseids radiant overhead. Most observers will be observing under lesser conditions and will see fewer meteors.

In addition to visual observers, automated electronic surveys have also been watching the sky. Up in Canada, the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) detects small meteors. In many cases, these meteors are smaller and fainter than those visible to the average backyard meteor watcher. A map of the sky from ~17 UT on 2015 August 10 shows a number of active showers. At least for very small particles, the Perseids are not the most active shower. The Southern Delta Aquariids (SDA) appear more active than the Perseids (PER) and the Northern Delta Aquariids (NDA) are a little less active than the Perseids. This will change over the next 2 nights.

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While radar was good at picking up very small meteors, all-sky fireball cameras are excellent at seeing the very largest meteors. What we call fireballs. NASA has a number of cameras set up to “triangulate” the observation of fireballs and determine their original orbits around the Sun. There are 4 groups of cameras in NASA’s All Sky Fireball Network including 3 in the Tucson area that I was somewhat involved in setting up. Even thought the Tucson cameras were hampered by the same rain and clouds that I was at home, the other camera groups detected a number of fireballs. Of the 21 fireballs, 14 of them were Perseids. At least at the large end of the meteor ‘spectrum’ the Perseids are dominating the night sky.