(meteorobs) Re: late Geminid?

[Richard Kramer]

At 02:44 PM 12/29/2006, you wrote:
>Richard and All,
>
>The Geminid swarm is fairly narrow and the Earth passes through the 
>debris field for only ten days. Therefore the fireball you witnessed 
>could not be a member of the Geminid shower. Even if the Geminids 
>were still active the radiant would have moved into Cancer so any 
>meteor from the area of Castor would not be a Geminid.
>
>More likely, your fireball was a member of the antihelion radiant, 
>which is currently centered in central Gemini. Unlike the Geminids, 
>this shower has a wide radiant stretching fifteen degrees in right 
>ascension and ten degrees in declination. The velocity is only 
>slightly less than the Geminids so these meteors could appear similar.
>
>I hope this helps!

Robert,

Thank you for the helpful comment. I'm familiar with the temporal 
profile of GEM which makes me share your doubt that last night's 
flare could be a late GEM. However, last night's meteor plotted back 
well east of central Gemini to roughly 122 RA, 33+. Would this still 
be within the ANT radiant? My impression at the time was that it 
looked just like a bright Geminid should look but did seem, perhaps, 
to be a little bit slower than "normal" for a GEM. However, since I 
saw only this one, isolated meteor, and since I was not watching for 
meteors but simply walking my dog, I don't trust my impression of its 
velocity. Also, brighter meteors generally tend to seem to me to be 
travelling more slowly than "normal" shower members.

I happened to be facing directly south through a thin scrim of 
denuded tree branches when the meteor appeared and I had a perfect 
vantage point to plot it. It was a fairly long track, maybe long 
enough that its origin is actually more northerly than +33, but it 
could plausibly be plotted to that spot. Since I know the drift 
profile of the GEM radiant quite well, it's difficult not to mentally 
"pin" the origin of the track to the extrapolated location of that 
radiant. In any case, whatever the true declination, my impression 
was that this track originated too easterly to be part of the ANT 
radiant. What do you think, perhaps a SPO coincidentally imitating a GEM?

Regards,
Richard