A Compendium of Aurigid Observions

by various TACos

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Jeffrey D. Gortatowsky

I was looking east and could see from zenith down to about 15 deg.

Rich Neuschaefer

It's remarkable that this was predicted so accurately.

-Leonard Tramiel

over the next 35 minutes, blocking the "pale eye" as best I could, I saw 15-20, mostly very bright ones.

a satellite passed thru auriga right around 4:17, faded away, towards capella.

Jim Feldhouse

John Brown

The stars stood out in the clear still air, despite moonglow and lights from the boulevard. We sat down and got comfortable , slumped back in chairs for the best view, , and talked out the stories of the constellations, and our place in the cosmos. A different breed of shower, this one arrived promptly at 4 am. At a rate of one good streaker a minute, it put on a great hour-long show. Sometimes we hit clusters of pebbles and onc 3 lit up in succession in the same area, affording a direct look. I'm always just barely catching meteors out of the corner of my eye, being distracted by something else, so the "repeaters" were a delight. By 5, the show had fizzled out, but we caught a few strays and munched on crackers with our tea.

All in all a wonderful session, the cool stillness of the dark, a bit of stillness after a hectic week, and time to talk with a friend about the greater wonders of life. We rose with Venus, folded up our chairs and headed off to our separate days.

Carol Widger

I too saw the satellite the brighten and then faded between Cassiopeia and Perseus. The best bolide I saw was at 11:10UT traveling from east to west across the 'W' of Cassiopeia. Left a nice 4 or 5 second persistent trail. Eight was my count from 11:10UT to 11:55UT. Often as I was scanning I 'thought' I had seen a dim streak, but I did not count these as it could have been simple reflections off my glass by the moon to my back. So this is consider a confirmation of the prediction?

As small OR: I went outside about 10:00UT and spent an hour observing. I had setup the night before the GP mount. All I had to do was hoist the TV-101 (101mm f/5.4 APO) onto it. First I tried something new, a .5 Dioptrx on a 31mm Nagler. Viewing the Pleiades at 17x with a 4.5 degree FOV and a 5.75mm exit pupil the correction was subtle but there. I bought the Dioptrix on a whim used. Al Nagler himself after looking at my glasses felt I probably did not need them, but if I wanted to try, recommended a .75. or .5. I placed an astromart ad for a .75 or .5 and a .5 came up. Yes I know, I should have gotten my prescription. Call me a wild and crazy guy. Anyway there is no doubt it helps round up the stars when rotated 'just so'. But I think .75 would have almost perfected it. Nonetheless for now, I'll keep in on the 31mm or perhaps move it to the 22mm Panoptic where, at 24x, its exit pupil is about 4mm.

I took a look at Plato, the walled plain on the moon and was able to make out the 3 largest craterlets. One being a double so make that 4 craterlets. And the 'Chevron' like albedo feature near the slumped wall area. This was at powers of 227x to 272x using 3-6mm zoom and a TV 2.5x Barlow.

Using the same setup I swung over to Mars. An obvious gibbous phase with some sort of markings but all in all too small and too much variation in the atmosphere to make out what I was seeing. Then it was time to sit in the recliner and take in the Aurigids.

Temps low 70's (20-21C)
Hum: 64%

Calm Winds

Hazy / Humid for SoCal

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Jeffrey D. Gortatowsky

We counted 16 in about 30 minutes from our backyard in Rocklin. Observing from 4:20 to 4:50am.

Nice bright yellow .. Best one was across Orion. Too bad the moon interfered but nice regardless.

Tony Franco

With astro twilight beginning shortly after 5 am, I ended with a quick binocular tour of M42, 35,36,37,38, Pleides, Hyades, Perseid association, Double cluster, Stock 2, NGC 663, Ngc457, M31, M15, and the Moon with 15x45 Canon binoculars.

Total: 27 meteors over 80 minutes.
Trail tracing: Overall ratio of about seven to one for meteor trails that trace back to Auriga vs other positions in sky.
Visual Peak: The cluster of four bright meteors within a minute or two around 4:16 am (about twenty minutes earlier than the predicted peak at 4:37)

The total numbers of Aurigids visible from a suburban site with a bright waning moon obviously made more of a shower than a storm. However, it's not often you get a chance to watch the debris left over from a long period comet that last visited the solar system around the reign of Julius Caesar.

Dr. Peter Jenniskens from the SETI institute in Mountain View was one of the meteor shower experts who predicted this years event. See both interesting background information and the detailed counts and zenith hourly rates from his own airborne observing run with NASA/Ames over the Bay Area last night:

http://aurigids.seti.org/

--David Kingsley

Caught a short beauty about 3:31 right down the middle right of Auriga, "hope it comes out on film" also saw the one across Orion "sweet" Saw a few straight-on flashes within auriga, and at 5:03 caught 3 within a 2 minute period west toward polaris and the other 2 below auriga.

Moon definitly messed up a great fairly dark morning for our neck of the woods..but over all, it was worth getting up early for..

Nick J

Two of the more interesting Agurids was one about 4:10 moving south away from the area of Auriga and passing above Orion. The other interesting one was very brief but bright, in the northeast part of the "box" of Auriga. I think that was around 4:35 am PDT. I was checking the time now and then but didn't write it down and after a few hours my memory is a little fuzzy.

Rich Neuschaefer

I saw 5 Aurigids between 4 am and 5:30 -- far fewer than others did, but given the bright sky and my poor dark vision, pleasing nonetheless. I was facing east, with a view from north to southeast, and from about 10 degrees (my rooftop) for an additional 30 degrees.

The winter stars were curiously bright, very steady. They seemed unnaturally bright in that moonlit sky.

Clear Skies!

Jim Van Nuland

The moon was really bright and mostly in the way, though we did figure out that a hat with even a small brim helped considerably. Who knew a sun hat would come in handy for looking at meteors?

I'm glad I got up to see this. :)

Heather Steingruebl

Set alarm for 04:00. Saw 15 Aurigids between 04:10 and 05:00 from back yard. Sat facing Auriga looking toward the NE under a tree so that one branch was hiding the Moon. Could only see about 20% of the sky but was out of the Moon's glare.

Saw first Aurigid meteor at 04:10, then one more before 04:14. Bright and very fast meteors.

At 04:14 saw best Aurigid of the session with a lingering, glowing trail. Glittering, orange trail persisted for about one second, spanned about 5 degrees, and was above Cassiopeia.

Saw three more Aurigids before 04:26.

At approx. 04:28, a satellite passed South to North through the top of Auriga, and dimmed out of sight abruptly as it left Auriga.

Saw four Aurigid meteors between 04:28 and 04:36. Also saw a random meteor headed through Orion towards Auriga.

Saw three more Aurigids between 04:36 an 04:45.

One Aurigid between 04:45 and 04:56.

One last Aurigid between 04:56 and 05:00 when I went inside. Aurigids were bright and fast. No colors noted except in sparkly trail.

Bill Parkhurst

I was very impressed with the meteor count espciall considering the bright moon overhead.

Michelle Stone

But the most unusual sight came later. At about 5:14 as I was packing up, I noticed an unexpectedly bright "star" in the north. It faded from mag 0 or brighter to nothing across the next ten seconds or so. (I have no experience judging magnitude, but it was brighter than Vega earlier, and roughly comparable to Sirius in the east.) There was no apparent color, and it didn't appear to move during that time. I didn't see anything obvious in binoculars after spending a few minutes to dig them out.

I sketched its position relative the bright stars nearby, which turned out to be Polaris, Kocab and gamma UMa, and Dubhe and Merak. The position was about halfway between Dubhe and Megrez, probably somewhat away from the bowl.

Any suggestions what this was? I can only guess it was a reflection from a satellite of some sort, though the lack of obvious motion confuses me.

-- Greg Parker