(meteorobs) Visual and Video Quadrantids from Tucson

Carl Hergenrother chergen at yahoo.com
Sun Jan 4 11:06:13 EST 2009


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I tried sending this posting out a few times already and they must have gotten lost in the ether. They'll probably all show up at the same time...

The Quadrantids
were also impressive from Tucson on the morning of Jan 3 UT. Jan 4 UT
was clouded out so luckily the clouds held off until after the peak.

My
SALSA camera which is part of Sirko's MetRec-based program was running
all night. It is a PC164CEX-2 with a 4/1.2 lens. 107 meteors were
detected including at least 73 Quadrantids. It is likely that a few
Quadrantids were id'd as Sporadics due to poor positions.

A movie of the 107 meteors from last night is posted on my blog at transientsky.wordpress.com.

Visually
I was able to get in a little under 2 hours of observing. 82
Quadrantids were picked up in 1h 50m. From the moment I got settled in
around 11:30 UT it was obvious that the Quadrantids were going strong.
8 meteors in 7 minutes is a good start under a +5.5 magnitude sky. 

The best
rates seem to occur around 13:20 UT after I decided to stop counting
(figures...). It was mid-twilight and a quick look around the sky saw
almost a dozen meteors within a few minutes. 4 were seen in under a
minute.

The Quadrantids seemed to be dominated by fainter
members early in my observing session. As the session progressed,
brighter objects became more prelavent with the brightest few being
magnitude -3. There were quite a number of blue meteors. Very few were
trained.

Also of interest is something related to a note in
Wesley Stone's posting. He mentioned a number of faint fast meteors
radiating from the south. I also noticed quite a few of these meteors.
The most interesting thing about them was they all left short lasting
trails even though they were all faint (mag 3-4). Unfortunately I
wasn't plotting so I couldn't determine a common radiant.

My
video camera did pick up a few meteors that may have been related.
Three meteors may share a common radiant near RA = 155, Dec = -15. But
with only 3 possible members you have to doubt the reality of this
radiant. Any one else detect elevated activity from just south of Virgo
last night?

- Carl




      


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