Geminds.

[Baz Pearce]

Anybody been out looking for meteors yet?

I saw an early 1 on Saturday night while out for a bino session. The sky is slowly clearing out here (Thursday 2am), and should stay clear til around midnight. So i'm going to nip out back for an hour or 2 this morning under mag 4 skies for a look about, and have a quick count. My regular meteor site says there will be about 20 p/h, so i should catch a few. Out to darker (mag 5) skies in the evening with my bud for more.

Report to follow,

Baz.

[Baz Pearce]

Harrumph!! Not a sausage this morning. Far too hazy.

Better tonight i hope.

[David Smith]

Was out for a few hours 00.30 - 04.30, say about 75 but vast majority were in the first couple of hours. Went very quiet after 03.00.

[scoobee]

Been trying to look, to much cloud about and for tonight its raining nevermind onwards and upwards

[mjpfc]

Quite clear yesterday afternoon so I arranged for some of my friends to come over (Home made soup etc to keep us going)

Some clouds and haze just before sunset.

Lumps of scud-like Cumulus took over after dark and the clear bits got smaller and smaller between them.

Had a quick look at Jupiter early evening and caught what may have been a geminid (or an unassociated meteor) go past Orion

but the skies got worse and I even missed Ganymede going across Jupiter in the wee hours.

Checked at Midnight, 01:00 and 03:00 but no good.

The weather has been a p[articular pain in the pants at events this year........

Mick

[Gary23]

I was out for a few hours last night before the cloud came and saw nothing really. I think it was down to poor visibility, could barely make our the Pleiades, that should give an idea of how bad it was.

It's not looking good for tonight either, cloud and rain forecast for the night.

What's particularly frustrating is that earlier in the week the were a couple of really crisp, clear nights.

Always the next one I suppose.

[keeplookingup]

Beijing was overcasted and snow. Nothing. But i saw a few early ones before the peak. This is usually a great shower.

next!

[Axeldude]

Clouds over here in Belgium, like keeplookingup said, on to the next!

[nephilim]

Stopped half way to the lakes for a quick 'break' & saw five short ones in succession (around 10:30pm) so was 'foolishly' expecting great things, got to my girlfriends & skies finally cleared enough around 2am ( The peak) saw several short ones & one beautiful long bright streak which seemed to originate from Castor itself Not as good as I was expecting but better than the previous Leonids.

[JB80]

Clouds over here in Belgium, like keeplookingup said, on to the next!

Yep, and lots of rain on the way.

[tombulgin]

Spent a few hours out on my deck near Guildford on Wednesday night with a mate, a bottle of red and a pouch of tobacco, from 11pm to 1am. Sky was patchy but cleared towards the end of the sesh. We reckon we counted about 20. Mostly small ones travelling otuward from radiant in all directions. One particularly bright one charged straight down midway through the session....the only one I didn't see of course (rolling a fag!).

And damn....was it cold!!

[bingevader]

They made the national news.

Splendid in Scotland apparently!

Rain here!

Cheers

[Baz Pearce]

Bit of a disappointment here too really. 1 of the clearest days we've seen since last winter, but at 3pm the sky started to haze up. By the time we got out to the dark site, only the view overhead was clear. We did get to see 12 in total between us. 11 of which came from the radiant. Al saw a blue sporadic from an angle, from roughly around Taurus heading north. The best and brightest we saw went right through Orion and beyond. slightly dimmer than Jupiter that had a nice but short-lived trail. About 9pm the clouds rolled over the hill and killed off all barring a furry looking Jupiter. Just ended up watching NASA's live broadcast.

Baz.

[The Warthog]

I went out last night, warmly clad in a Canadian made parka and laid back on my reclining chair. My first foray was at 9.00, (0100 UT) and I had a 40º hole in the clouds about Jupiter which closed up after about 20 Minutes. I went back ouside at 11.00 PM (0300 UT) and watched for an hour and a quarter. In that time I saw seven meteors despit the Rubbish LP we have around here.The sky was completely clear, and the transparency and seeing as good as it gets. The first two meteors were short and slow, about 25 º west of the radiant, the third was a very long path without a significant trail that covered about !5º, again to the west of the radiant. Number four was similar to 1 and 2. Five and 6 were short, quick meteors abbout 30º w of the radiant, and were a double, the sixth startin almost immediately after the first and close together. I haven't seen a double in 45 years. Then everything went quiet for about 50 minutes and my last one came almost directly out of the radiant. just beside Castor, and was very short and brief. Had I not been looking right there, I would have missed it. This is now my most successful meteor observing night, considering the skies and my eyesight. At -2 it takes something special to get me out there for that long.

[Catweazel]

Me and the dog got up and had a look, but, as usual, blanket cloud here

[nickdud]

WEYHEY!!! i got a big one!!!

tonight(14th-around 22:50) as i walked up the drive to my door a very bright streak shot to the east from overhead(i'm in south leicestershire)

i saw another 3 from the back garden, none as bright as the first tho.

it almost made up for last nights cloud covered disappointment.

[jammo]

I see a huge Gemind about 11pm last night, then walking to my car and just happened to look up and there was a massive streak across the sky with a smaller one right beside it, it was amazing, second best shooting star i've ever seen, stunning!!!!!. :eek:

......so i went home and set camera up on continuous shooting for a while but didn't capture one

still got a startrail image out of the photos lol

[allcart]

I gave it a go with a widefield lens between 11 and 12.30am until the local chavs started a ruckass outside my house and back fence. Too distracting and risky to leave stuff out in the garden unattended so packed in even though the sky was really clear. Had a quick look through the subs on the camera screen but doesn't look like I got any. I was covering the sky from the twins to Orion. I'll have a closer look later, but I'm not hopeful.

[Baz Pearce]

Thank you all for adding your reports gang. Had a final look early this morning when we had part cloudy skies between 1 and 2am. Managed to catch a couple more. Both classic Geminids, bright, white and fast. 1 streaked through Perseus fizzling out just under Cassiopeia mag -1.5ish, the other was down near Leo's front paws about mag 0.

There's a great very bright Geminid on the NASA website. You can play the short video here:- http://www.nasa.gov/connect/chat/geminids2012.html Would have been spectacular for any naked eye witnesses.

Baz.

[keeplookingup]

I had not spent much time on showers until the Geminids 2010. There were about 800 people out in the freezing Beijing winter night(ALL NIGHT) but we lived to count over 500 for the total evening. I saw triplets and doubles often . which was the best shower i have ever seen.

Waiting for January and the Quadrantids. Haven't looked at the data yet. Oh, I will do so now