July is a month of showers in Tucson. Not only does meteor activity pick up after 6 months of a seasonal lull, but the rains return to the desert after a few months of dry and hot weather. While the rains haven’t arrived yet, they weren’t too far off. The first four nights of the month saw clear skies. The following 3 nights were affected by a brightening Moon, debris clouds from distance thunderstorms and smoke from the Burro fire in the Santa Catalina mountains to the north of us.
The SALSA3 camera system will be operating every night this month, though a few of the nights will be clouded and/or rained out due to the monsoon rains. The clouds may be a real pain during the next few nights due to the Full Moon. Brightly lit clouds have a habit of driving the meteor detection software crazy.
Obs Date(UT) Time TOT SPO ANT CAP Oth SAL 2017-07-07 06h 59m 14 10 1 0 3 SAL 2017-07-06 06h 47m 14 6 0 0 8 SAL 2017-07-05 04h 18m 10 5 1 0 4 SAL 2017-07-04 08h 17m 23 13 3 0 7 SAL 2017-07-03 07h 18m 21 11 0 1 1 SAL 2017-07-02 07h 50m 23 18 1 0 4 SAL 2017-07-01 07h 59m 25 15 1 2 7 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 CAP - alpha Capricornids Oth - other minor showers
The Transient Sky - Comets, Asteroids, Meteors 