[TNham] Quadrantid Meteor Shower this weekend

[Greg Williams]

WEEKEND METEORS:
The annual Quadrantid meteor shower peaks this weekend. Forecasters expect a
flurry of meteors, perhaps 25 to 60 per hour, sometime between 0600 UT and
0800 UT (1:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. EST) on Sunday morning, January 4th. The
timing favors western Europe and eastern parts of North America.

The Quadrantid meteor shower is one of the year's most intense, regularly
producing 50 to 120 meteors per hour in northern skies. Yet it is seldom
observed by many people.

One reason is the weather. The shower peaks in early January (usually
January 3rd or 4th) when northern skies are cloudy, and the chill air
discourages lingering outdoors. The shower's radiant is located high in the
northern sky, so observers in the southern hemisphere, where the weather
might be more favorable, usually spot only a small number of Quadrantids
streaking over the horizon.

Another reason is brevity. The shower's peak lasts just a few hours. Even
dedicated meteor observers are likely to miss such a sharp maximum. In his
classic book Meteor Astronomy, Prof. A.C.B. Lovell lamented that "useful
counts of the Quadrantid rate were made in 24 Januaries out of a possible 68
between 1860 and 1927. ... The maximum rate during this period appears to
have occurred in 1932 (80 per hour) although the results are influenced by
unfavorable weather."

Bright moonlight will interfere with the shower, to a degree. Try standing
in the shadow of a building or hill, or wait to look until the wee hours
before dawn when the moon is low. Got clouds? Or too much moonlight? Even if
you can't see the Quadrantids, you can still hear them. Simply click one of
our meteor radar links below:

live audio: NAVSPASUR (monitoring station: Roswell, NM) -
http://science.nasa.gov/audio/meteor/navspasur.m3u
live audio: 67 MHz forward-scatter radar (Roswell, NM) -
http://science.nasa.gov/audio/meteor/meteorburst.m3u

Notes: Our radar monitoring sites are operated by engineer Stan Nelson.
NAVSPASUR is the Naval Space Surveillance Radar. Echoes from Quadrantids
sound like this:
http://science.nasa.gov/spaceweather/meteors/audio/geminidecho.mp3

http://www.spaceweather.com/meteors/quadrantids/quadrantids.html - Info on
the Quadrantids
http://www.zilker.net/%7Ecrossley/NAVSPASUR/index.html - Info on NAVSPASUR
and how to listen to meteor hits with amateur transceiver or scanner capable
of picking up SSB/CW.

Greg Williams
k4hsm@lock-net.com

Tis often better to be silent and thought a fool rather than to speak and
remove all doubt.
No trees were destroyed in the sending of this contaminant-free message
We do concede, a significant number of electrons may have been
inconvenienced.