(meteorobs) The Aurigid peak(s) I would believe in

[Chris Peterson]

Thanks for the nice report.

It is difficult to accurately determine the shape of the activity 
profile for a very brief intense shower like this. When you only have 
tens of events total, what constitutes statistical significance?

I'm pretty certain that there were two distinct peaks, one in the five 
minute period ending at 11:20 and the other in the five minute period 
ending at 11:35. The later peak comes after a significant drop in 
activity (the five minute period ending at 11:25), so doesn't look like 
a shoulder. At least, this is what I see in the data from my cameras, 
two of which collected about 50 meteors each. My highest five minute 
counts were 6 from one camera and 9 from another. The cameras don't 
record meteors dimmer than about mag 2, so it's also possible that what 
appears as a gap to me was filled in somewhat by dimmer meteors recorded 
by visual observers. I note that most of the frequency distribution data 
published elsewhere, including radar data, shows two distinct peaks.

I'm currently performing multiple station analysis of the radiant and 
orbits. I'm hoping that will lend some insight into the structure seen 
in the activity.

I also look forward to seeing some post-analysis of this shower from the 
folks who specialize in the details of the stream structure.

Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Daniel Fischer" <dfischer at astro.uni-bonn.de>
To: <meteorobs at meteorobs.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2007 11:19 AM
Subject: (meteorobs) The Aurigid peak(s) I would believe in


> After some (manual) number crunching of our - and a few additional - 
> data the diagram in
> http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~dfischer/skyreports/2007/analysis1.html 
> came out: I'm now
> pretty convinced that there was only one dominant peak at 11:15 UTC, 
> but probably with
> a 'shoulder' at 11:30. It would be interesting to see if these later 
> meteors were different
> in any respect: If so, an additional 'population' of particles should 
> have been present.
>
> Daniel