(meteorobs) September Perseids - 2008/09/09 - Prelim Video Results

[Carl Hergenrother]

Hello Everyone,

I am able to confirm the reports by Paul Martsching and Bill Cooke (posted on
spaceweather.com) of a September Perseid outburst. My backyard automated camera,
SALSA, picked up a nice number of bright meteors from near the SPE radiant.

SALSA is a KT&C KPC-650BH (same as the Supercircuits PC164C) 1/3" camera with a
Computar 4.0/1.2 lens. The system can detect meteors down to ~+2 mag over a FOV of
~64X49 degrees. It is part of the IMO Video Meteor network and uses the MetRec
meteor recognition software.

Here in Tucson, AZ, the radiant rose around ~3 UT. The 1st SPE was observed at
7:32 UT. 14 SPEs were observed over the next ~4 hours including a beautiful -5
fireball at 7:37 UT. The last definite SPE was observed at 10:47, though a possible
SPE (just misses the radiant) was seen at 11:12 UT. The camera stopped observing 
the sky at 12:14 UT as the sky brightened. There were episodes of patchy clouds so a
few may have been mixed.

The outburst allowed an accurate radiant determination at (RA = 49, DEC = +39). This
is well to the southwest of the official IMO radiant at (RA = 60, DEC = +47). My radiant
is much closer to the radiant derived by Sirko Molau from years of IMO Video data at
(RA = 44, DEC = +39). I used Sirko's 'radfind' code for the radiant determination.

I'll try to post a radiant plot and a few of the brighter meteors this evening.

My camera has been up and running for over 6 months now. I was looking forward
to imaging a meteor outburst. So it felt real good to see this outburst.

Cheers,
-  Carl Hergenrother