Orionids maximum, night of 21st-22nd October 2023

[Rick]

This is a tracked stack of the meteors captured by my two Global Meteor Network cameras on the night of 21st to 22nd October, 2023. One camera caught 135 meteors and the other caught 153. There's some field overlap, and some meteors get counted twice because of that. One camera caught 64 Orionids, and the other caught 77. A few meteors from the Southern Taurid, epsilon Geminid, Leonis Minorid and chi Taurid showers were also caught by both cameras. There were 44 sporadics on one camera and 52 on the other.


Gallery link

2023 October 21st 18:40 UTC to 22nd 05:24 UTC from Dursley, Gloucestershire
2 x Sony IMX291 cameras with 4mm lenses
Global Meteor Network RMS multi-camera tracked stack

One camera recorded 4.25 hours of clear sky, and the other 5.33 hours, but quite a few of the meteors were caught through thin cloud, and you can see traces of that on the stack.

[Rick]

Last night was another surprisingly good one for meteors, despite quite a bit of cloud and bright moonlight. There are still a few Orionids to be seen, some of them quite bright. These UKmon orbit determinations all show Orionids caught by my cameras, and you can see just how clear the sky was (or rather, wasn't) if you take a look at the contributing images.

https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2023/orbits/202310/20231027/20231027_044557.339_UK/index.html
https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2023/orbits/202310/20231027/20231027_042429.548_UK/index.html
https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2023/orbits/202310/20231027/20231027_044025.990_UK/index.html
https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2023/orbits/202310/20231027/20231027_021851.453_UK/index.html

Obviously, it's not all about Orionids. Here's quite a nice sporadic which my camera caught through thin cloud. Other cameras had far better views of it.

https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2023/orbits/202310/20231026/20231026_211847.538_UK/index.html

I rather like the way the Global Meteor Network system can get useful data even on pretty patchy nights. Of course I also rather like it because, apart from a bit of system tickling from time to time, it mostly gets on with the job and lets me enjoy the results.