(meteorobs) What is the PCA meteor shower currently active?

[Robert Lunsford]

Pierre, George, and All,

Despite being an established radiant in the IAU Meteor Data Center, the Psi Cassiopeiids were not found in the latest video database of the IMO. This study did find 255 radiants using a baseline of activity being recorded on 5 consecutive days and up to a 15° deviation in radiant distance and 15 km/s in velocity to match a detected shower with a counterpart from the MDC working list. Thus the PCA's must be a shower of extremely short duration or very weak or a combination of both.

The list of radiants included in my weekly activity outlooks only include the most active radiants throughout the year. The main criteria, using the IMO database, is that a shower must be one of the top 10 active radiants for any particular night during the 2nd half of the year (when activity is high) and one of the top 5 active radiants during the 1st half of the year (when activity is low). Using this criteria still produces many showers that produce an hourly rate of 1 or less at maximum. 

I hope this helps!

Robert Lunsford  


---- "George S. Williams" <ra at websterling.com> wrote: 
> On 7/19/2014 6:06 PM, Pierre Martin wrote:
> > Hello list,
> >
> > The past few days, I noticed that the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar at http://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov is showing an active radiant just north of Cassiopeia with the three letter code "PCA".  The plotted meteors appear to be medium-fast velocity, and the radiant seems very wide.
> >
> > Does anyone know what this shower is?
> 
> Hey, Pierre,
> 
> The shower is the psi Cassiopeiids
> 
> http://www.astro.amu.edu.pl/~jopek/MDC2007/Roje/pojedynczy_obiekt.php?kodstrumienia=00187
> 
> Later,
> George