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Draconid Meteor Outburst 08OCT2012
Source: Bill Cooke, NASA |
Major Draconid Meteor Shower Outburst Underway 08/09OCT2012
CMOR radar is reporting a major Draconid outburst, commencing at 16 UT. Shower radar rates are at
1000 meteors per hour, which is unprecedented for the Draconids. This is greater than last year, and 5x the 2005 level. I am asking our European colleagues to look for anything visual.
Regards,
Bill Cooke
NASA Meteoroid Environment Office
Confirmation from Czech Republic and Hungary:
First visual confirmation from eastern Europe (J. Koukal from Czech Republic and a observer from Hungary): visual outburst estimated at ZHR 40-50 with high population index. Some brighter Draconids were captured by video. Jacub is a very experienced observer!
Benelux clouded out....
Long trains,
Michel Vandeputte
Givatayim Observatory, Israel
Omri Katz, an amateur astronomer from the Givatayim Observatory, managed to spot 6 Draconid meteors visually between 21:00 and 21:25 UT this evening. The observation was made from Ramat Gan, in the heart of the Tel Aviv metropoline under heavily light polluted sky and partly cloudy as well. Omri associated the meteors to the Draconids shower by the radiant positiion in the sky. He did not record magnitudes but estimates that most were approximately of magnitude 2-3 and one of them -1.
Best of luck to other observers,
Shy Halatzi
Update:
Ben Nathaniel, an amateur astronomer from the Givatayim Observatory also observed the Draconids outburst of last week. Like Omri Katz, he observed from Ramat Gan, in the heart of the Tel Aviv metropoline under heavily light polluted sky and partly cloudy as well (although from a different neighborhood - they were not together). From 2030 UT until 2155 UT, he saw approximately 30 meteors. At approximately 20:35 (UT) he saw a small outburst of 10 meteors in just a few seconds. He estimates the average magnitude of all the meteors at 2-3 with a few zero magnitude meteors. Again like Omri's observation, this was performed following the email of Bill Cooke which I (Shy Halatzi) forwarded to our meteors division email list.
Best regards,,
Shy Halatzi
CMOR observations are in agreement with other reports. I have placed a couple of plots at
http://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/special/DRA_2012/drac_2012.jpg
http://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/special/DRA_2012/Draconids_2012.png
Radar numbers are from Peter Brown at Western. As Geert indicated, the peak is a rough match to Mikhail's 1959 stream. This event seems to follow in the grand tradition of short, intense Draconid outbursts.
Be interesting to see if anything further is seen. Regards,
Bill Cooke
NASA Meteoroid Environment Office
Tokyo is clouded out... :(
Spain
Activity detected in radio (143 MHz - Gràves) from 16h UT to 18h UT from Cercedilla (Madrid) by Rafael Campillos (AAM-UCM). Rafael detected a peak of 46 meteors/hour (from 16h to 17h UT) and 42 meteors/hour (from 17h to 18h UT) being the background level before and after the outburst at 20 meteors/hour.
No visual Draconid activity observed from 22h UT to 23h30m UT by Alejandro Sánchez and Francisco Ocaña from an observing place close to Teide Obs (Tenerife, Spain). After receiving the alert, we had a formal observing period from 22h25 UT to 22h55 UT under good observing conditions ( sky brightness 21,2 mag/arsec^2 ). Only 5 sporadics seen in this period. Alejandro also operated an all-sky DSLR camera during the whole period with no Draconids detected.
Video recording stations started observation at 18h30m UT at mainland Spain. No enhanced video activity detected at SPMN nodes operated by the UCM group.
Francisco Ocaña
Just Updated: Update: Jesús Bartolomé (AAM) reports also a radio activity (143 MHz) enhacement at 16h UT from Madrid, with activity two times higher than background level.
UCM - Universidad Complutense de Madrid http://guaix.fis.ucm.es/fireball
AAM - Agrupación Astronómica de Madrid http://www.aam.org.es/
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