Category: Meteor

When you sit back to watch the Perseid meteor shower, you're actually seeing pieces of comet debris heat up as they enter Earth's atmosphere and burn up in a bright burst of light, streaking a vivid path across the sky as they travel at 37 miles (59 kilometers) per second, according to NASA.  The Perseids result from Earth passing through debris (bits of ice and rock) left behind by the Comet Swift-Tuttle.

Comet Swift-Tuttle was discovered independently by two astronomers, Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle, in 1862.  Comet Swift-Tuttle is the largest object known to repeatedly pass by Earth; its nucleus is about 16 miles (26 kilometers) wide. It last passed near Earth during its orbit around the sun in 1992, and the next time will be in 2126. 

In 2024 the Perseid meteor shower was active between 17 July and 24 August, with the number of meteors (also known as shooting stars) increasing every night until it reached its peak, after which it then tailed off.  This year the peak was on the night of the 12th and before dawn on 13 August when Earth travelled through the densest and dustiest part of this debris.

So not wanting to miss this annual meteor shower several CMHASD members met at the Pavilion on the night of the 10th/11th August to watch the Perseid meteor shower (The night of the 12th/13th was not chosen simply because of members work commitments on the morning of the 13th).  Members stayed at the pavilion for around 3 1/2 hours (9.30pm to 1am) and during that time around 17 visual sightings were spotted by members.  

Below are some photos taken by member Honor Wheeler of the meteors she caught on camera that night, with another member helping her out by pointing to the 1st meteor that was spotted!

It was a very good night, not too cold, great company and lots of banter & chit chat amongst members.  Some members even took the opportunity to do some deep sky imaging too.

There's one........

Camera settings:  Canon M6II, Rokinon 14mm lens, ISO1000, f/2.8, exposure between 4sec and 10sec.

Plus; while we were busy watching the meteors at the pavilion the meteor camera was busy too and below is a summary of the meteors the camera picked up on the night of the 10th/11th Aug 2024 which you can download.

Perseids Night of 10-11 August 2024 (1)

For more information about the Perseid Meteor Shower check out https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/perseid-meteor-shower-guide-uk-when-where-to-see

It was a very busy night for CMHASD meteor camera on the 14th/15th Dec 2022.  The Meteor camera captured 141 'sightings' of which 126 were meteors including 4 sightings of 2 meteors in the same shot by the camera.  Out of the 126 meteors 98 were Geminids; the rest were other classes of meteors including some sporadics. 

Meteors, also known as shooting stars, are pieces of dust and debris from space that burn up in Earth's atmosphere, where they can create streaks across the night sky. When Earth passes through the dusty trail of a comet or asteroid's orbit, the many streaks of light in the sky are known as a meteor shower.  The 98 Geminid meteors detected by the camera were part of the annual Geminid meteor shower.

For more information about the society meteor camera & project click here.

For more information about the Geminid Meteor Shower please visit the UKMON website at https://ukmeteornetwork.co.uk/showers/2022-geminids/

Below are two out of the 4 photos showing the double meteors captured by the camera.

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Almost 2000 meteors were detected in 2020, we would have had quite a few more but for the cloudy skies in August that limited the view of the Perseid's in August.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800"] 2020 Meteor stats collated by Simon Dawes from data reviewd and analysed by the Crayford Meteor Team.[/caption]

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This is the meteor report for the automated meteor camera operated by the Crayford manor house astronomical society Dartford, for the month of September 2020

This month we detected a total of 269 meteors, well over half were sporadic meteors, meteors from known showers only making a minor contribution to the total, the largest identified shower came from the September Perseids but contributed only 22 meteors to the months total

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