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(meteorobs) Xi Bootids may return
METEOR ALERT for possible Xi Bootid Meteors
Next Friday morning, February 6th, or sooner, there may be a repeat showing
of the possible Xi Bootid meteor shower, which was seen last year from the
Florida Keys, during the annual Winter Star Party. I saw 14 meteors in about
2 1/2 hours from a radiant near Xi Bootis. I estimated the location of the
putative radiant as best I could as I wasn't plotting. If I hadn't see seven
meteors from the same area during the first hour, from 7:23 to 8:23 U.T., it
would have been hard to estimate a radiant. As I didn't have any charts for
plotting, instead of sticking my head in the sand, I decided to try to locate
the radiant, which I estimated to be near the star Xi Bootis.
Once I was fixed on the radiant, which was not hard to do after seeing 7
meteors the first hour coming from Xi Bootis, I was strict when assigning any
association to it. As I knew that personal bias can play evil tricks, I put a
limit of five degrees on the size of the radiant. This is smaller than what the
IMO uses for shower associations when plotting. After a total of seven hours
of observing from Feb. 5/6 to Feb. 8/9, I determined that 26 meteors of medium
speed were seen coming from a possible new radiant near the star Xi Bootis.
George Zay reported seeing nothing from this area for the past few years,
and last year two other IMO observers reported seeing nothing, but none of them
observed at the same time as I did last year, and the other two IMO observers
were out too early in the night. Interestingly, about three hours of enhanced
radio meteor activity was reported by noted radio meteor observer Maurice De
Meyere of Deurle, Belgium, on February 4/5 1996 U.T. according to the Radio
Meteor Bulletin No. 31 (March 1996), but as luck would have it, his equipment
was not working on February 5/6 last year. Last year I was caught off guard,
and had no star maps to plot the Xi Bootid meteors that I saw, but I still
think the radiant is within ten degrees of my estimate. This next week it is
important to look again for these meteors, to see if it they return. The best
time to look are the hours before dawn. Plotting is highly recomended.
Below is some data from my observations last year of possible Xi Bootids
DATE UT % Clear LM Magn. Dist. 0 1 2 3 4 5
Feb.5/6, 1997 07:23-08:23 .85 6.2 0 0 0 4 3 0
08:23-09:23 .80 6.2 0 0 0 2 1 2
Feb.6/7, 1997 08:36-09:36 .66 5.8 0 0 1 1 1 0
09:36-10:36 .75 6.1 0 0 0 0 3 0
Feb.7/8, 1997 08:37-09:37 1.0 6.3 0 0 0 1 1 0
09:37-10:37 1.0 6.4 0 0 1 0 0 1
Feb 8/9, 1997 08:25-09:25 .66 5.8 0 0 0 0 2 0
Note: As can be seen, the rates seemed to drop off after the 7th.
Two additional Xi Bootids were seen incidentally after I stopped
recording on Feb. 6th. I saw 26 meteors total from the Xi Boo area.
GWG