Shooting Star Sighting

[Hawkian]

I saw a shooting star last night near Ursa Minor and i was wondering if there's a way to tell what meteor shower it might have been a part of by its location in the sky and the date? I thought it could have been part of the Ursids but i read they peak in December.

[kerrylewis]

You can get meteors anywhere in the sky at any time . They don't have to be associated with a regular shower .

Kerry

[JB80]

Kerry is right, it's quite usual to see sporadic or random meteors that are not associated with any shower.

That said at the moment there is the little known Spetember Epsilon Perseids happening and a few days ago this shower had an unexpected outburst for a couple of hours.

Basically if you can draw a straight line bacwards in the sky it will lead you to the constellation it radiated from, so if you go to wiki and look at their list of known meteor showers you can then match up the dates and try and trace a line back to whatever region the shower is coming from.

Hope that makes sense?

[Hawkian]

Sure does. Thank you both for the replies.

[nephilim]

Kerry is right, it's quite usual to see sporadic or random meteors that are not associated with any shower.

That said at the moment there is the little known Spetember Epsilon Perseids happening and a few days ago this shower had an unexpected outburst for a couple of hours.

Basically if you can draw a straight line bacwards in the sky it will lead you to the constellation it radiated from, so if you go to wiki and look at their list of known meteor showers you can then match up the dates and try and trace a line back to whatever region the shower is coming from.

Hope that makes sense?

We were out at around 4am a few nights ago (around the 7th) to have a crack at Mars (very poor being so low in the sky) & we saw at least 15 meteors emanating from Perseus in just an hr, it was the best display i've seen for over a year, very impressive for such a relatively unknown shower  

Steve