Early October Meteors

With this post, I have caught up with my SALSA3 meteor data. The plot nicely shows the increase not just in total meteors per night but also the Taurids (the Northern and Souther Taurids are combined in the plot) and Orionids.

Note the big jump in rates starting on the night of October 8. The increase is not actually real. After noticing how low rates seemed during September I took my camera system apart and discovered that at some point this summer, the glass in the camera enclosure separated from the housing. As a result rain must have collected on the camera lens. After replacing the housing and cleaning the lens, the number of detections doubled!

The big shower of October is the Orionids. This year’s will be observable under Moon-less skies. Bob Lunsford of the American Meteor Society has an excellent guide to observing these old pieces of our Solar System’s most famous comet, Comet 1P/Halley.

Obs Date(UT)     Time    TOT SPO EGE STA NTA ORI Oth
SAL 2017-10-17  10h 48m   53  25  3   7   4   12  2
SAL 2017-10-16  11h 25m   45  25  2   8   3   7   0
SAL 2017-10-15  10h 22m   50  33  1   6   1   8   1
SAL 2017-10-14  00h 00m
SAL 2017-10-13  05h 16m   43  27  1   4   4   4   3
SAL 2017-10-12  02h 39m   16  10  0   1   3   0   2
SAL 2017-10-11  10h 37m   50  37  3   5   3   2   0
SAL 2017-10-10  11h 05m   45  30  4   5   2   2   2
SAL 2017-10-09  10h 56m   42  36  1   3   0   1   1
SAL 2017-10-08  08h 02m   34  18  0   4   4   4   4
SAL 2017-10-07  10h 43m   18  11  0   1   1   2   3
SAL 2017-10-06  10h 01m   20  16  1   1   1   1   0
SAL 2017-10-05  01h 50m    3   1  0   1   0   1   0
SAL 2017-10-04  10h 39m   20  12  0   1   3   3   1
SAL 2017-10-03  10h 32m   16  13  0   0   0   1   2
SAL 2017-10-02  10h 42m   24  18  1   2   1   0   2
SAL 2017-10-01  10h 34m   24  13  2   2   0   2   5 

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
SLY - September Lyncids
NTA - Northern Taurids
STA - Southern Taurids
ORI - Orionids
Oth - other minor showers