(meteorobs) More fireballs with PER than with all other showers?

[Paul Jones]

Hi Dan,
    I've been watching the Perseids on and off visually ever since 1974 and
I must say that I have never really noticed an overabundance of fireballs
from this radiant at all.  At least, not relative to other major showers
such as the Leonids and Geminids.   In fact, some years have gone by
without me seeing even one fireball from them, even with rates in the 90+
per hour range.  But that's just me, I guess.  Other years, I have seen
some nice ones indeed though.  I caught only one Perseid fireball in a good
look at the 2012 maximum, for example.
    One thing I will say with assurance however, is that I have never seen
the Perseids produce a "fireball shower" year, such as the Leonids and
Geminids have upon occasion, although I may have missed one.  Shoot, even
the Taurids have years when fireballs are much more common from them than
other years.  The Perseids do, however, produce quite a number of bright,
showy meteors that might actually be below fireball status, but some
inexperienced observers tend to overestimate the magnitudes and call them
fireballs when they may not meet the requirement.
    It would be interesting to hear from other experienced observers on the
list of their thoughts on this subject.  Estimating magnitudes of visually
 observed meteors tends to be as subjective as color determination
sometimes, in my experience (recall the recent discussions regarding "green
fireballs" on the list that went on for quite some time).  Video systems
would tend to be more accurate, I would think.  Just my "two cents"...;o).

Clear skies to all for the Perseids upcoming, Paul



On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 5:04 PM, <dfischer at astro.uni-bonn.de> wrote:

> The statistics reported in
> http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/26jul_perseids
> based on a single fireball camera network should easily be reproduced by
> other video observation networks or even in visual meteor data bases - and
> the claimed overabundance of fireballs with the PER should actually have
> been detected well before if it is as prominent as shown in the history.
> Has it?
>
> Dan
>
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