Taurid meteor shower - peaking over the next few weeks/months

[Leo S]

1 hour ago, andrew63 said:

Unfortunately everything is pre programmed, so no adjustments can be made to length of exposure. I guess it could be useful as an additional resource though.

That's a shame, but as you say, it could still be useful in case of an emergency, where nothing else is available.

[Leo S]

Looks like fireball rates have dropped over the last 24 hrs, but the cameras still captured a few bright Taurids last night (06/07 Nov) which I have yet to edit/upload, two of them with bright terminal flashes, albeit in a haze covered sky with few if any stars visible!

In the mean time, here are the brighter captures from recent nights.

UKMON analysis.

 

UKMON analysis.

 

No UKMON analysis, but looks like another southern Taurid. Just managed to catch it before it completely clouded up for the night!

 

UKMON analysis.

 

 

I also ran two cameras whenever I was able during the activity window of the Perseids, and I have to say, while the Perseids were excellent this year, with plenty of bright events/fireballs, the last week or so of Taurids has significantly bettered them in terms of numbers of bright events, at least from my camera's point of view.

[scotty1]

It must take a while to check your video for meteors. Do you have to watch them back in realtime? 

I noticed timeanddate doesn't list the Taurids in the meteor showers, the hourly rates are too low I expect.

Hopefully a couple of clear-ish nights coming up for eastern  UK Friday/Saturday for the Taurids, maybe early Leonids too.

Edited November 11, 2022 by scotty1

[Leo S]

7 hours ago, scotty1 said:

It must take a while to check your video for meteors. Do you have to watch them back in realtime? 

I noticed timeanddate doesn't list the Taurids in the meteor showers, the hourly rates are too low I expect.

Hopefully a couple of clear-ish nights coming up for eastern  UK Friday/Saturday for the Taurids, maybe early Leonids too.

Scotty, I cheat - when the cameras are running I keep checking the "meteors live" on UKMON. If I spot a bright event on a UKMON camera I make a note of the time, and which clip it occurred during, so all I need to do is check footage at around that specific time.

When I first started running a camera (May 2021) I would save all the footage, and look through it real time to make sure anything interesting was saved, but it was unsustainable - not only was I filling 12/14 TB HDDs in short order, but all my spare time was spent going through footage.  There's no way I'd be able to run my second camera (and check all the footage) if I were to go back to the old way of doing things. This way, I'm contemplating adding more cameras, as soon as I get the chance.

Yes, looking a bit better for this weekend. I'm looking forward to seeing how the rates have evolved - hopefully still plenty of bright ones about.

Looking forward to the Leonids as well. There is potential for a significant outburst this year, so fingers are crossed that weather will be good for that.

 

[scotty1]

Just looking through those UKMON cameras, and there's a location named (nettleham s) I'm guessing that means the camera is pointing south? But the picture from that camera shows the plough. 

Alot of cloud arrived from the south recently, looks clearer in northern/western England. 

Edited November 12, 2022 by scotty1

[Leo S]

Well spotted. Yes, some of the cameras are misleadingly labeled. Wakefield N is another. I'm sure there is at least one other.

It seems very quiet tonight, so far at least. I caught one little -2 mag Taurid earlier, quite close to the radiant, but bright ones are few and far between it seems, though there was one just before it started clearing up here, so cameras were not yet running.

Edit to add: It's starting to cloud up a bit here now, but so far at least, thin hazy cloud, which shouldn't stop me, although it's not ideal and means taking the ISO down a notch or two. Up till now the sky was very good, considering the bright Moon!

Edited November 12, 2022 by Leo S

[scotty1]

Low cloud moving in now, a claggy night  hereabouts. Misty can't see any stars.

Edited November 12, 2022 by scotty1

[Leo S]

North eastern UK?

It's looking like a near perfect night here tonight, albeit cloud forecast at the end.

[scotty1]

7 hours ago, Leo S said:

North eastern UK?

It's looking like a near perfect night here tonight, albeit cloud forecast at the end.

East Anglia 

I think this misty weather is heading North , make the most of any clear skies you have now.  

Murky moon at midnight

 

Edited November 13, 2022 by scotty1

[Leo S]

2 hours ago, scotty1 said:

East Anglia 

I think this misty weather is heading North , make the most of any clear skies you have now. 

Not too far then. One of my cameras pretty much covers East Anglia. It's caught a few significant events in that direction over the last few weeks, but the larger ones always seem to be a bit further away, over the N. Sea. If I'm not mistaken there was a good sized Leonid fireball (probably out at sea/over the near continent) last night (spotted it on UKMON last night) that that camera should have caught - I have not had a chance to check footage yet though!

It's still looking good here tonight, but the forecast says it'll start to cloud up around 02:00. Saw my first Taurid of the night flying overhead and behind the house just 20 or 30 minutes ago (a little after 21:00). Hopefully others will head towards the camera FOVs rather than away!

[Leo S]

A little disappointing last night. Only observed less bright Taurids - nothing much above 0 mag. The sky stayed very clear till around 03:00 when all that haze from the south rolled it, but clear sky is not much good to me if there is nothing going on in it! The cameras might have caught some smaller events. I'll check later.

Thanks to the early stop last night I was able to check Friday night's footage though, and I did manage to catch a couple of fireballs - The Leonid I mentioned in my previous post (albeit low down in hazy cloud, and probably over the Channel/France) - attached an image of this event from a UKMON camera (see below) , and a sporadic which was reported (completely missed it on UKMON!). Neither was particularly impressive, but perhaps I'll post clips here at some point - I've got a bit of a backlog building up!

In other news, the large Taurid I caught about a week back has now made it to the UKMON "fireballs in 2022" page: https://archive.ukmeteornetwork.co.uk/reports/2022/orbits/202211/20221108/20221108_210750.418_UK/index.html

Very pleased as it confirms that my analysis of start/end points of the event (submitted to the IMO) appears to be spot on, as well as my magnitude estimate! I will update the thread I started.

Lastly, and perhaps straying slightly off topic, but I also noticed that there was a very slow fireball a couple of weeks back that is thought to have dropped meteorites in the Cotswalds area. Contemplating a little trip down there this week to do some meteorite hunting!

 

[Leo S]

23 hours ago, scotty1 said:

East Anglia 

I think this misty weather is heading North , make the most of any clear skies you have now.  

Murky moon at midnight

 

That's exactly what it looked like here at 03:10 last night!

[scotty1]

It's very misty tonight,but mostly clear ATM, only able to get 10sec f3.5 exposure at 1250 IS0 ,as it blows out. 

Edit 

Low cloud now covering most of the sky.

Edited November 13, 2022 by scotty1

[Leo S]

Good luck. Still worth a try even under challenging conditions. Just have to hope there's a bright one.

Complete fog-out here. There was a short partially clear patch earlier on, but hardly worth setting up cameras for just a few minutes. The next reasonably clear nights look to be just about the right time for the Leonids!

Edit - still some large ones about:

and https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=190239

Edited November 14, 2022 by Leo S

[Leo S]

Cameras up and running for a couple of hours now, since about 23:00. Not the best sky, but already caught one, and I see there was a significant fireball not too long ago (on UKMON live).

[Leo S]

Very mixed bag of cloud and clear sky tonight, but the cameras have already caught one Taurid fireball, also captured by multiple UKMON cameras. Here is one example. I'll try and post a clip from my own camera later. They also caught a smaller (but still quite bright) Taurid and a long Leonid, so looking like it could get quite busy!

[Leo S]

Didn't want to spam this forum with too many threads, so think I'll just post on here. Here's last nights large event - note the fragmentation at the end:

Still going through footage from last night, but it looks like there were quite a few bright Leonids around.

Edited November 16, 2022 by Leo S
fragmentation

[Leo S]

Just realized I got the time of the fireball wrong! It was at 22:39, not 23:39!

So I have submitted another (corrected!) fireball report and edited the title of the clip - Five others reported the event so far.

[Leo S]

Playing catch up. Here's a Taurid fireball from the night before the last one I posted. It was not a northern or southern Taurid, but an A2 Taurid according to UKMON. Unfortunately it was a long way off (over France), and behind cloud/tree. Only one other reported it so far (my report has been submitted).

 

[andrew63]

Lovely clear night - not much joy with Leonids. Saw a nice meteor  just now 6.15 passing above Arcturus in the east.

[scotty1]

On 16/11/2022 at 18:49, Leo S said:

Didn't want to spam this forum with too many threads, so think I'll just post on here. Here's last nights large event - note the fragmentation at the end:

Still going through footage from last night, but it looks like there were quite a few bright Leonids around.

That is quite bright, and the way it found the gap from your perspective was lucky. 

Should be clear spells tonight, not sure the clag will clear here, before rain comes in from the east, and then west! Hopefully the predicted Leonid enhancement shows up.

Edited November 18, 2022 by scotty1

[andrew63]

Caught this possible Leonid on iPhone at 3.39 - Leo to the left and Gemini above.

I have another image taken in the lightening sky at 6.41. Saw nothing naked eye, but 3 trails circling the sickle of Leo just above Regulas near the centre of picture - satellites? Could not find any images taken around this time from UKMON.

Edited November 18, 2022 by andrew63
photo

[Leo S]

9 hours ago, andrew63 said:

Lovely clear night - not much joy with Leonids. Saw a nice meteor  just now 6.15 passing above Arcturus in the east.

It was raining/cloudy here for most of the night, however I did venture out (not exactly sure what time, but just as it was starting to get light, so would not be surprised if it was at around the time of your event), and while I was out,  a sizable gap appeared in the cloud to the south. A long/slow -2 mag sporadic appeared in the gap, heading slightly upwards, and west. It was slightly yellowish and sparkly. It was around 40 degrees above the horizon, which would be about right to put it midway between here and S. Wales. Almost certainly an earthgrazer - long path and heading up/away from the horizon are typical earthgrazer characteristics.

Always nice to catch the long slow ones. While not as bright as a fireball, some less bright meteors can be just as spectacular - earth grazing meteors in particular. Last night's was a pretty good one, but it was perhaps a "two out of five" compared to some grazers I've been fortunate to observe.

[Leo S]

10 hours ago, scotty1 said:

That is quite bright, and the way it found the gap from your perspective was lucky. 

Should be clear spells tonight, not sure the clag will clear here, before rain comes in from the east, and then west! Hopefully the predicted Leonid enhancement shows up.

It was nice that a bright one found a gap for a change. It does seem like many of the bright events recently have either been just out of frame, or obscured by thicker cloud. I'm still waiting for an event with near ideal characteristics (close and very bright), but so far those keep escaping me!

Not looking too bad here tonight. Should be plenty of gaps later on. It's times like this I moved from long exposure imaging of meteors to recording footage. With 1/30 sec (vs ~ 10+ sec) any cloud in the FOV does not end up a completely smudged mess! The super short exposure also help to cope with light pollution, without me having to compromise sensitivity or lower ISO too much, although I do have to lower ISO a bit to compensate when the sky gets brighter/cloudier.

PS, Someone caught a nice Taurid fireball over Puerto Rico a couple of nights back with an a7S.

 

[Leo S]

8 hours ago, andrew63 said:

Caught this possible Leonid on iPhone at 3.39 - Leo to the left and Gemini above.

Looks like a Leonid to me. Nicely caught!