(meteorobs) Geminids from Tucson (Dec. 13 UT)

[chergen]

With the weather forecast to be poor tonight I decided to make 
last night (Dec. 13 UT) my dedicated Geminid watch night. To my 
surprise the Geminids seemed to be near peak form.

Between 8:08 and 10:26 UT (with a 7 minute break in the middle) I 
counted 154 Geminids and 24 sporadics (really non-Geminids since 
I wasn't keeping track of the other active showers) under a sky 
with a LM of +6.1. 

The Geminids came in bunches. There were multiple occurrences of 
3-4 Geminids visible within a span of 10-30 seconds. At the other 
extreme there were a few dry spells when no meteors were seen for 
about 4 minutes. The brightness of the Geminids also seemed to be 
patchy with 10-20 minutes of bright 0th to 2nd magnitude meteors 
followed by 10-20 minutes of only 3rd magnitude or fainter ones.

- Carl Hergenrother (Tucson, AZ)