Rain and clouds have been the rule in the Tucson area lately. After 1.5 months of no rain, we got 0.30″ at the house. Mind you, I’m not complaining. Especially since the nights are rarely completely cloudy as was the case over the past two nights. Both nights saw a few hours of clear skies resulting in some meteor detections.
While the most active shower is still the fading Eta Aquariids (ETA), more Eta Lyrids (ELY) were detected last night. The ELYs are from Comet IRAS-Araki-Alcock which passed very close to Earth (0.03 au) in 1983 and reached 1st magnitude. It is a long-period comet currently on an orbit with a ~1000 year period. The ELY are a minor shower but produced a few meteors each year in early May.
Obs Date(UT) Time TOT SPO ANT XLI ETA ELY SOP SAL 2017-05-10 03h 02m 12 8 0 0 1 3 0 SAL 2017-05-09 02h 49m 3 2 1 0 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 - Anthelions XLI - April Chi Librids ETA - Eta Aquariids ELY - Eta Lyrids SOP - Southern May Ophiucids Oth - other minor showers
The Transient Sky - Comets, Asteroids, Meteors 