(meteorobs) Northern bias to meteor showers?

Bruce McCurdy bmccurdy at telusplanet.net
Tue Jan 23 13:15:29 EST 2007


I watched an entire evening match of the Australian Open hoping for a 
between-games "skyline" view of Comet McNaught ... which wasn't forthcoming; 
what were they thinking? While I waited in vain and watched the tennis, I 
spent some of the time pondering the disparity between northern and southern 
observing. Many observers have commented that generally speaking one is 
better off living in the Southern Hemisphere, what with the centre of the 
Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds, Eta Carinae, the Jewel Box, 47 Tucanae, 
more favourable apparitions of Mars and Mercury, and so on. In fact, 
somebody recently told me that he couldn't think of a single aspect of 
observing in which northerners are better off. I immediately responded that 
those in the northern hemisphere have it good when it comes to meteor 
observing.

A review of the major showers listed in the RASC Observer's Handbook 2007 
reveals how good we have it. Twelve major visual showers (ZHR >= 10) are 
listed: Quadrantids (radiant declination +49°), Lyrids (+34°), Eta Aquarids 
(-2°), South Delta Aquarids (-16°), Perseids (+58°), Draconids (+54°), 
Orionids (+16°), South Taurids (+14°), North Taurids (+22°), Leonids (+22°), 
Geminids (+33°), Ursids (+76°). Add them all up and that comes exactly 360°, 
an interesting coincidence. More to the point, the *average* radiant is 
+30°. I'm not formally trained in statistics but I know enough about them to 
realize that this distribution is extraordinary.

The Handbook also lists four daylight showers: Arietids (+26°), Zeta 
Perseids (+26°), Beta Taurids (+21°), and D Sextantids (-2°), with an 
average radiant of +18°. Not so strong a bias, but still significant.

I then turned to the longer list on the IMO website, wondering if perhaps 
the Observer's Handbook (of which I am on the production team) has its own 
built-in bias towards northern observers. Only the Puppid/Velid radiant 
lists a ZHR as high as 10 and could be considered a borderline "omission" 
from the Handbook. 23 of the 32 showers listed by IMO have a northern 
radiant, with a raw average of +15°. Since most of the additional southern 
radiants were of minor showers I weighted each shower by ZHR (a very rough 
exercise, since a few were listed as variable rates which I simply 
discounted as ZHR = 0) and again came up with an "average" shower meteor 
emanating from +31°.

The IMO list also underscores the imbalance between the two halves of the 
calendar year: to arbitrarily choose the most extreme division, between 
February-July there are 11 showers, 7 with southern radiants; and from 
August-January, there are 21 showers, all but two of them with northerly 
radiants. Presumably the imbalance by date is somehow related to the 
imbalance by declination, but I wonder whether there might be a physical 
explanation for all this.

Since we meteor observers have officially entered the "off-season" it's a 
good time to question the many experts who populate this forum. I don't 
recall seeing the above subject addressed in the five years I have 
subscribed to meteorobs, so I'll ask a simple question: what the heck is 
going on?

Bruce
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