Eta Aquarids - Let's Do a count !

[gaa_ian]

OK a bit of notice on this one ....
6th of May is the peak of the Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower, with a predicted ZHR of 60/hr
Closer to the Time I will set up a poll to collate the counts.
I got a bit more interested in Meteor Showers after talking with Rob Mcnaught at NACAA this year.
Rob has a great system for Automated monitoring of rates and velocities of meteor showers.
I am sure you will be up for it Kearn ;)

[Blue Skies]

I was planning on observing on the night of 3rd/4th, as that is a scheduled deep sky club event - weather permitting of course. It's our turn to be drenched at the moment and there is no end in sight!

[gaa_ian]

Hi Jacquie
I suppose the rain is needed :shrug:
Hope it clears up for you by the 3rd/4th though.
We are coming into our dry season here and hopefully a dry Anzac day observing night.
I had a look for any stray Lyrids this morning, saw a few Satellites but no Meteors !

[fringe_dweller]

count me in Ian :) hope the weather co-operates for everyone!
nice little write up in AS&T from Greg on this one too

[Rob_K]

Yeah Ian, these look good! Unfortunately fine weather or not it looks like I'm out. IMO are predicting peak ZHR up to 70, based on a 12-year cycle, but the NASA "fluxtimator" is giving me about 27, LOL :shrug:. Good luck with it! :thumbsup:

Cheers -

[gaa_ian]

Thanks Rob/Kearn
Who has the best meteor shower site now ?
There used to be one attached to the IMO site by Gary Koncks ?
But I don't think it is up anymore ?

[Blue Skies]

Gary Kronk's pages are now here: http://meteorshowersonline.com/index.html and they are just as excellent as ever.

[fringe_dweller]

Hi Ian, the one i still like the most for a quick condensed version/look is still Robert Lunsford's page, altho sometimes not always updated, still is my first port of call,

http://www.amsmeteors.org/lunsford/

but then i am an 8 year? veteran of meterobs mailing lists not the yahoo groups mirror site either - they rock! nothing beats them imo,

this newish site totally rocks too

http://www.astro.amu.edu.pl/~jopek/MDC2007/index.php

check out the most comprehensive lists ever in sidebar

http://www.astro.amu.edu.pl/~jopek/MDC2007/Roje/roje_lista.php?corobic_roje=0&sort_roje=0

[AlexN]

caught 5 - 7 strays during my 4.5hr observing session last night.. cant wait!

[Rob_K]

Wow, nice links guys, thanks! :thumbsup: Kearn, looks like you’re really into this stuff! I just tend to use the IMO, or more particularly their calendar:
http://www.imo.net/ (http://www.imo.net/)
http://www.imo.net/calendar/2008?PHPSESSID=d38925598fb518d070a1 34c028723470 (http://www.imo.net/calendar/2008?PHPSESSID=d38925598fb518d070a1 34c028723470)

Use this NASA one sometimes too, although I’ve got no idea how accurate it is or how often it is updated. Data appears to be missing for lots of showers too :shrug::
http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/estimator.html (http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/estimator.html)

Cheers -

[fringe_dweller]

Rob, i'm more a very casual armchair/computer chair meteor fan than a visual observer thesedays, did a shipload of visual years ago, body cant hack the hours and conditions like i used to in my '30s, but i'm out for the big rarer showboat ones!,
i would need to move back somewhere with darker skies again like i used to have, and give up smoking lol, it can be done!.
I like what people like Karl are doing, that appeals to me more now - amazing how one can live off the fumes of good ones of yesteryear for a long time, like i have - i saw the peaks of the last proposed ETA 10-12 cycle from dark morning skies, be great if it works out to be accurate prediction. :thumbsup:

[jjjnettie]

I'm planning on setting up the Gstar-Ex with a wide angle lens to capture the event. Weather permitting of course.

[gaa_ian]

Thanks Kearn
They are great links !
Its a pity we don't seem to have something to match this for the southern hemisphere :shrug:
Maybe, we could ask Mike to include a Category for Meteor Showers ?
Just a thought ?

[gaa_ian]

Thanks for that link Jacquie, his pages are excellent, very accessible writing style and he even thinks about our 1/2 of the world !

[Outbackmanyep]

I fell alseep for the Geminids, i wonder if i can stay awake or get up early for this one! I'll give it a shot!

[Dave47tuc]

This link may help also. Old friend of mine Adam runs this.
Can make some good reading and see the photo's of our 1998 leonids trip to Woomera.
http://adamrmarsh.customer.netspace.net.au/index_files/EAMNHomepage.htm

I hope to see some Eta's this week. :D

[Liz]

Struggled outa bed early hours today for some of the meteor shower. Beautiful night and sky, though moisture in the air as usual for up here. Saw about 16 meteors from 0230 - 0500 hrs, with some lovely long lasting trails, with 14 of these likely eta aquarids. Worth getting up, though will prob be better tomorrow am.

[Craig.a.c]

I will have to keep an eye for them in the next few nights while I am at work.
Which part of the night sky will it be coming from?

[badchap]

From the north east part of the sky. Aquarius is up over the horizon after around 2 am-ish. Still gives it some time to get higher in the sky before sunrise.

Another quick bit of info with a link to a chart to add-

http://home.mira.net/~reynella/skywatch/ssky.htm#Meteor

[Blue Skies]

I made a serious attempt last night but cloud sunk most of the efforts. However I did get one solid hour in with 14 eta Aquarids seen between 4.30am-5.30am (20.30 - 21.30 UT May 3rd). Then the cloud came back. I saw at least two -3 Aquarids, one outside of that hour recording period.

I'm having a go at filling out the official IMO report form and while I had good intentions I don't think I can submit it as I didn't record all the magnitudes for the sporadics. Is there anyone out there who does this who knows how much that matters? I'll know next time!

Also what info do the "T_eff" and "F" boxes want? The instructions aren't clear. :shrug:

[gaa_ian]

OK ... Tomorrow morning is the go
I will be out looking over the Arafura Sea to see if we get an early peak.
There were a few possible Eta Aquarids last night around midnight at the end of our Observing night rising up from the horizion.
Better get to bed early so I can get up at 4 AM for a good hour of viewing !

[fringe_dweller]

Hi Jacquie,

Teff or T_eff just means Total effective time of observing, ie add total amount of time spent counting then minus breaks/stoppages, in a decimal form, ie one and a half hours equals 1.5 hours

the F they ask for is the amount of field of view of your fixed and indicated in form, field of view blocked by clouds or trees whatever, but as a precentage, but then fed into a fancy equation and broken down further - which is pretty over the top IMO.

they have a help page for form

http://www.imo.net/visual/report/electronic/help

'Poper' visual observations of meteor showers can actually ruin the fun a bit of observing, again, IMO, I mean a really thorough 'proper' report would include small bins of time, smaller the better, ect. ect. lots of formality and rigidity

I have a talking clock, set to announce the time evry 5 minutes, and digital voice recorder now, they work well together, if it all works, thats the only easy way to do it full on I think, magnitudes arent essential either, maybe just for speccy bright ones, or an average of magnitude for all

the way you did your first report is just fine IMO :) there is a thread with a report poll that is going to be passed on by Ian I believe

the most important part of all, is to be reasonably sure that the meteors shower candidates are indeed from the shower before marking them so
cheers

[jjjnettie]

I managed to see ONE Eta Aquarid this morning, before a bank of clouds started to roll up from the east.

[gaa_ian]

OK Folks
Poll is here:
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?p=321887#post321887
Feel free to make comments too !
Cheers
Ian

[Blue Skies]

Ok, thanks Fringe_dweller. I'll have a look at the link. I printed out the pages with the formulas on but didn't think they applied so I'll have a closer read. I'm treating it all as part of the learning experience - it would be nice to get it perfect first time but if you don't start somewhere, including mistakes, you never really learn what is the 'right' way.

[Outbackmanyep]

Hi Ian and peoples!

I got up and headed to Walcha Aerodrome this morning at 3:15am, sleeping bags and blankets in the back of the Hilux, i had a very INTERESTING morning! I took my Canon 400D and tripod, did some 2min 1min and 30sec exposures randomly. In the first 30 to 45 mins i saw 19 meteors, not counting sporadics, a few were mag 3-4. Very short lived but bright. In the following hour from 4:30 to 5:30 i saw 40, limiting magnitude for my location was 6.5, (6.9 using averted vision) Conditions were PERFECT! No clouds, all stars from zenith to about 15 degrees above horizon were pin-point sharp and steady, no haze, a few low level clouds on the horizon and thunderstorms i could see to the north and north-east along the coastal areas.
Now the interesting thing is that i saw a LOT of meteors that were actually pinpoint flashes IE: heading towards ME! One particular "train" i saw 6 flashes in the space of about 30 seconds, NOT and aeroplane thats for sure, all heading towards me and came from the same spot in the sky, below the radiant about 4 degrees.
Most of the meteors i saw were very short lived, half a degree trails or less, with about 3 that were longish, about 2 degrees long and bright.

One more thing, i saw a few satellites, a HUGE (-4?) Iridium flare and one satellite that puzzled me, i watched it coming from south to north, it was about mag 4, and it flickered once, then three times then about 30 times really fast, like a fizzly sparkler.....anyone got any info on what this could have been??

What a great night!
I'll check out my images and see if i can post some a little later if i find anything on them!!!!

Cheers!

[fringe_dweller]

no worries blue skies :) glad to hear you're having a good go at it! like you, i like doing 'proper' obs, my companions in the past would just roll their eyes at the idea of it lol

just got this from meteorobs mailing list today

'Hello meteor people,

Although the eta-Aquariids is one of the most active meteor showers of the
year, it does not receive a lot of attention because of the difficulty to
observe this shower from northern latitudes. Also this year the number of
observations reported so far is fairly low.

To attract more observers, we just activated an online ZHR graph at:

http://www.imo.net/zhr

Spread the word to your friends at slightly lower latitudes!

Clear skies,
Geert


PS: To keep the ZHR estimates reliable, the graph may automatically ignore
observing periods that were performed under low radiant elevation and/or
poor limiting magnitude. Nevertheless, you will always be credited in the
observer statistics and your data may still be used in a manual analysis.'

I used to just post my obs on meteorobs, and the good guys from NAMN would add it to their obs section, havent done it for a while tho
___________________________________ ____________

[Karls48]

Well, I must be pointing my camera in wrong direction. But then I got not many choices with all the houses and trees around me. Last night – Eta aquaridis total = 0. The cloud rolled in at about 3 am, but I would still expect few before that. Camera azimuth 336.2 deg, elevation 48.6 deg, FoV 43.7 deg less obstruction. Includes is the plot of etA meteors captured with fixed camera over past 10 days. And brightest etA meteor I have captured - Magnitude -1.1, speed 75.2 km/sec , visible 0.2 sec. I have captured another 7 meteors that come very close to etA radiant but even if they miss radiant by only few degrees, strictly speaking they are sporadic.