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(meteorobs) Meteor Observations Sep 13/14 ZAYGE & Triangulids
I ended up observing all night last night afterall. My Teff should be near 6.5
hours. LM near 6.0 until around 2 am where it drops to around 5.6. Starting at
21hrs:30 local and stopped at 5h00 local. The first hour produced 5 and the
next 7. The last dark hour before moon interference gave me 10. After the moon
rose....which was about the time Lunsford showed up, activity dropped
considerably(I don't blame him for this though :o) ). Most likely due to the
moon. I plotted a total of 47 meteors. 8 were Piscids and 7 were delta
Aurigids. The rest were sporadics. The brightest were a -2 sporadic and a -1
delta aurigid. There were quite a number of dim meteors...as expected this
time of year.
As for possible Aries-Triangulids: Radiating from Gliba's radiant of RA
1h52m, Dec +19, I recorded one possibility if the velocity is Slow at some
distance from the "radiant". Radiating from Sleeter's radiant of RA 2h00m, Dec
+30, I recorded one possibility if the velocity is Slow also at some distance
from the "radiant". Radiating from Kronk's radiant of RA 2h20m, Dec +30, I
recorded one possibility(same meteor also passes close to Sleeter's radiant),
if the velocity is Slow. If the velocity is Very Fast like that of the
Perseids or Leonids, there were 3 possibilities. Kronk and Sleeter noted that
"the speeds were Slow to Medium...much like that of the Aquarids (I assume he
is referring to the Kappa Aquarids with an entry velocity of 16 k/ms?) and
Capricornids(23 k/ms)". These are indeed slow speeds. Hard to miss these slow
pokes. So these three Very fast meteors appear to be chance alignments or not
related to what they were seeing. My center of view for the whole night varied
from near the Great Square for a few hours and eventually in the Aries-
Triangulum region. Looking at my plots for the sporadics, I can probably close
my eyes and pick any spot at random and find 1 to 4 meteors appearing to
radiate from it. One such spot tonight was 5 meteors appearing to radiate from
the "kids" in Auriga not too far from Capella. These were all Very Fast in
speed. Looking at my other two previous nights there were none from this
location. From last nights efforts, I did not see anything significant to
indicate a possible radiant in the Aries-Triangulum region. IMO chose showers
having at least a ZHR of 3 so that they can be recognized above the sporadic
background. As an example, the Piscids have a ZHR of 3 on it's peak night of
Sept. 20th. Last night I recorded 8 of these. They also appeared obvious. They
also have a speed of Slow to Medium. A possibility that some of what were seen
for "Aries-Triangulids" might have been Piscids? Combining my observing
efforts of three nights from the last four, I plotted 84 meteors during about
12.5 Teff hours under clear skies. Of these three nights, only the one's I've
mentioned for last night came close to matching any of the suspected radiants.
This does not signify shower activity. Doing the same with the Piscids I
accumulated 13 with the weak ZHR of 3. In another post from Gliba about his
observations on the night of Sep 12/13, he mentions that there were other
observers in the past who have recorded activity from this area. These same
observers combined probably has declared at one time or another just about any
position in the sky as having a shower radiant of some kind. They have listed
thousands of radiant positions I understand. The majority were removed from
working lists such as IMO's simply because they don't show any repeat of
activity or that they are well below the sporadic background to be seriously
considered. There might be an active radiant in the A-T region? If there is,
I'm very surprised that I haven't found any indications of it much like I have
for the weak Piscid shower? I bet I can announce a random point in the sky
that there appears to be a weak meteor shower radiating from it and next year
there will be someone report seeing activity? Looking at my plots from
previous years covering this period of supposed A-T activity, nothing
significant appears also. Hopefully folks with these video camera's that can
detect +7 magnitudes will be used in the future?
George Zay
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