Meteor spotting?

[Rick]

Did anyone get out for a bit of Perseid spotting, or was the night sky clouded out? I gather from https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/ that they analysed over 15000 Perseids recorded by their automatic camera network.

I'm wondering whether I should be considering radio astronomy options. There are some ways of using radio for observing that don't need a big dish or an array of antennas covering a huge field (and level fields are hard to come by over here in the Cotswolds, anyway). It's also possible to monitor some things using not particularly expensive equipment that can be left running to observe by itself. Of course the results aren't going to be anything as spectacular as the images in Astrophotography, but it might be interesting and a bit less at the mercy of the weather...

[ApophisAstros]

On my Allsky Cam i got maybe 4 or 5 over about 3 nights absolute wash out , below my best one.

Shooting Star close to  Jupiter.
Roger

[ApophisAstros]

re https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/
Do they not have cloud there or are they above the skies?
Roger

[doug]

     A few of us went down to Otford and saw a couple of bright ones and a few fainter ones. Nice evening, though.

     Doug.

[Rick]

A few of us went down to Otford and saw a couple of bright ones and a few fainter ones.

Sometimes you get lucky. The Perseids have various short peaks of activity within the broad Persid season, and if you happen to catch one of those...

This year folk on the west coast of North America got lucky: https://twitter.com/eMeteorNews/status/1426721910960926725

Do they not have cloud there or are they above the skies?

It isn't really fair to compare one all-sky camera close to London with a distributed network of over 40 high-sensitivity cameras, some of which will be in good dark-sky sites. With cameras scattered all around the UK, there's a much higher chance that at least a few of them will have a clear sky on any given night...

How accurate's the timestamp on your image, is it UTC or BST, and how long are the individual exposures? There's a search function at https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/search/index.html to look for other possible sightings of the same meteor, but I found it needs quite a tight window over the Perseid period as there's rather too much data otherwise.

[ApophisAstros]

 

[Carole]

Roger lives in Worthing Rick so not close to London and he tells me he's Bortle 4.

Carole

[ApophisAstros]

Roger lives in Worthing Rick so not close to London and he tells me he's Bortle 4.

Carole

Thanks forgot to say that on post.

[Rick]

There looked to be quite a bit of light pollution in the all-sky view. Of course the clouds don't help, but looking at https://www.nightblight.cpre.org.uk/maps/ it seems the south coast around Brighton and Worthing isn't that wonderful from a light-pollution point of view, though it should be much better if you go just a little way to the north (on the downs) or south (but that's a mite damp).

[ApophisAstros]

I Am bortle 4 last time i checked with my SQL meter.
The cloud is so high and camera so sensitive ZWO ASI178mc its sensing the early morning Sunrise 4am.
One of my last images from same location NB and OSC RGB,

So light pollution isnt a problem i am 3 miles from sea so not much LP from the south and i mostly image North which is overlooking the downs.
Roger

[Rick]

Fooled by the colour of the cloud, then. I have an "all-sky"(-ish) weather camera, but it's not sensitive enough to do anything useful in the hours of darkness.  Mostly, it catches views of clouds in daylight, though it does sometimes catch a pretty sunrise or sunset.



It's tilted a little north to catch the distant horizon. It also isn't a complete "all-sky" view, but that doesn't make a lot of difference as my horizon's pretty limited to the south and west anyway. Looks like it would benefit from a slight turn eastwards next time I'm within reach of it.

[ApophisAstros]

Thats beautiful Rick , yes my ASC camera sees stars before i do and shows a lovely Milky Way , M31 and planets(obvously quite small , but they are there) on good seeing nights but no chance to ever see MW with eyeball no 1!
Roger.

[Rick]

I think I should look into setting up a meteor camera pointed in that general direction. Something with the standard(-ish) 88x45 degree field of view should stand a reasonable chance of seeing something if it's tilted a bit up so that Polaris is in the field of view.

It's not as if I don't already have more than one or two incomplete projects, after all, so what difference would one more make...

[Mac]

Well Bizzarly for spain we have had a weather front stuck over us for two weeks,
Much to the annoyance of the Brother in law who's currently over for two weeks,

So its mainly broken cloud whith a few solid cloudy days, temps have been from 29 through to 44.
Its not so much the heat but the humidity thats a pain.

We did have a couple of clear nights, but didnt see a single one.

Mac.

[Rick]

So much of meteor spotting is down to luck. You can set yourself out comfortably with a view in the right direction and still miss meteors because you blinked at the wrong moment, or whatever. It's fun when a good shower comes together, but more often than not I figure leaving an automatic system to do the watching would be a better idea...