Friday, January 2, 2015

Friday, January 2, 2015 - Still Hoping to see the Quadrantid Meteor Shower


  Cloudy conditions persisted during the predawn hours of Friday January 2nd. By 4:00 AM the sheets of high clouds that I'd seen on Thursday evening through midnight had given way to big clumps of altocumulus drifting slowly by. Some breaks in those clouds let me see Arcturus and some of the brighter stars in Bootes and Ursa Major, but way too much of the sky was covered to do a decent meteor observing session. We were about 41 hours away from the predicted peak of the Quadrantids. Had it been clearer, some decent visual data might have been obtained! By 4:00 AM the temperature had fallen to 25°F and though winds from the southwest were lighter than they'd been earlier in the night, the wind chill was still 16°F. This turned out to be the low temperature for the night.

  Temperatures started to climb again even before sunrise (at 8:06 AM). By mid-morning we were above the freezing point, and we topped out at 39°F for an afternoon high. Winds were light for most of the day, but picked up a little after dark. It was a dry day, but a bright overcast stayed in place that occasionally let filtered sunlight through. Sunset happened at 5:31 PM. Temperatures stayed above the freezing point after dark, but a thick overcast had settled in. By midnight there was light fog in the air and we were still at 34°F.

  That big low-pressure system I wrote about yesterday was still moving our way from the southwest on Friday, and radar images showed rain bands drifting toward us from Arkansas, Missouri, and southern Illinois all day long, but falling apart in the drier air still over Indiana. The first showers were supposed to reach us before dawn on Saturday, and forecasts still called for some of that precipitation to fall as freezing rain until turning to all rain after sunrise. Indiana counties just north of Marion County all the way to the Michigan border were under a Winter Weather Advisory from 3:00 AM - 9:00 AM on Saturday morning, with more of an icing threat from this same system.

Catch-Up Notes - AM Friday, December 26, 2014 - Meteor Observing and Possible Early Quadrantid


  My wife and I spent Christmas Day in Fort Wayne visiting her family. Christmas itself was a mostly cloudy but fairly mild day, with some very light rain in the morning and an afternoon high (in Indianapolis) of 41 F. The clouds started to break up in Fort Wayne not long after sunset, and by the time I went outside to warm up the car and start packing up the gifts, the sky was just amazingly clear. The Waxing Crescent Moon was shining in the Southwest sky, showing some bright Earthshine on its disk. To the East, the stars of Taurus and Orion were blazing away. While I was out there, I saw a fairly bright meteor shoot through the constellation of Cetus, seeming to originate near the Hyades in Taurus. It seemed like a great way to end Christmas 2014!

  Skies remained mostly clear throughout our drive back to the Indianapolis south side. After we'd dropped some passengers off in Greenwood and we were almost home, Adrian spotted a bright meteor zipping to the north which she described as bright as Jupiter. I didn't see it at all. Then, when we finally reached home, I went outside to the back yard to "supervise" our two little dogs after they'd been inside for over 12 hours. (I try to get out there with them after dark because of concerns like stray dogs and even coyotes wandering around the neighborhood at night.) While I was out there, I spotted yet another meteor that might have come from the Taurus area. Skies were crystal clear, the Moon had set, and I was starting to wonder if maybe some unusual meteor shower activity was going on! I decided to try and do a meteor watch, even though it was getting pretty cold out there!

  I did two sessions of meteor watching total during the predawn hours of December 26. I was lying in the lawn chair on the patio, about as bundled up as a person can get. I had on two sweatshirts over a t-shirt, my thick winter coat over that, two pairs of sweat pants, two pairs of socks under my shoes, my hat and gloves and the hood of one of the sweatshirts over my head, and I also had a pair of hand warmers in both pockets of the coat. I carried some BRNO Atlas charts outside with me, and I also had my digital voice recorder on hand so I could just record the information about any meteors spotted by voice. Each session lasted a little over an hour, and by the time I was done my hands and feet were numb and painful from lying out in that cold air. The temperature was about 30 F but there was a breeze that probably put wind chills in the low 20's F range.

  The first session lasted from 1:00 AM - 2:05 AM, and it was a frustrating one. In all that time outside I was only able to spot one faint Sporadic meteor. I'd seen two earlier that night without even trying, and after purposely staring at the sky, I saw nothing at all! I was facing south, looking high in the sky near Gamma Geminorum. The limiting magnitude was 5.3; about as good as it gets from my back yard!

  This is the plot of the Sporadic seen during that first session outside:


  I had a lot better luck during the second session. This one was from 3:00 AM - 4:05 AM, and I had turned the lawn chair to look high in the northeast this time, in the direction of the "bowl" of the Big Dipper, since a lot of current minor shower radiants were located in this area of the sky. During this time I was able to spot and plot a total of four meteors. Two of them were Sporadic and one very slow one (#2) was almost without a doubt a late member of the Ursid Shower, even though this shower had peaked four nights earlier. The brightest one of the night was also the most puzzling (#4). This one seemed to have a speed and a direction that identified it as a member of the Quadrantid Shower. However, all of the sources I'd read told me that Quadrantid meteors weren't visible until December 28 at the earliest. Had I really seen one two nights before the "official" start of this shower?

  These are the plots of the last four meteors seen tonight on the BRNO Atlas pages:



  By the end of the second session, high thin cirrus clouds started to drift over the sky from the north and west, so I gave up doing any other meteor watching. (I was shivering by now anyway in that frosty air!)

  I posted the question about whether or not I'd actually seen an early Quadrantid meteor to the Yahoo Meteor Observing Board on the 26th, and generally the comments from experienced observers on that message board were negative. Most replies told me that it was probably a Sporadic that just by chance happened to be in the right area at the right apparent speed. Still, I'm not totally ready to just dismiss this one as a random meteor instead of a Quadrantid! Maybe time will tell.

  The Ursid meteor seen tonight was the first one I'd ever seen!

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Thursday, January 1, 2015 - Hoping to see the Quadrantid Meteor Shower

  A strong Arctic high pressure system had settled over Indiana during the last few days of December, but the center of this system had started to slide east and bring us wind and clouds from the Southwest by the 31st. When midnight struck and we rang in 2015, the night sky was mostly clear with a few scattered high clouds and bright moonlight from the Waxing Gibbous Moon on the Aries / Taurus border. It was also 19°F with a steady moderate breeze that gave us a wind chill of 9°F. I'd thought about getting outside during the predawn hours of New Year's Day to try and see some early Quadrantid meteors, but the frigid air already took away my enthusiasm, and as the night went on more and more of the sky became cloud covered. By 3:00 AM the Moon was veiled by clouds and surrounded by a glow. Stars dimmer than 2nd magnitude were difficult to see. The conditions prevented any meteor watch.

  Sunrise on January 1 happened at 8:06 AM. This is the time of the latest sunrises of the year (Dec. 31 - Jan. 13). Thursday the 1st wasn't a bad day at all, to start January. It was mostly sunny with a lot of thin high clouds, plus some thicker altostratus by late afternoon. The high temperature reached 34°F but we couldn't get rid of that steady, moderate wind, so the wind chills made it feel 10° - 15° colder. There was no snow cover anywhere (Indianapolis had just finished one of the most snow-less Decembers on record). The ground didn't feel like frozen concrete today, like it had on Wednesday.

  Sunset happened at 5:31 PM. (Sunsets have been coming later since Dec. 1 - Dec. 13, when they occurred at 5:20 PM.) Skies remained full of high clouds after dark. The Moon (this time a brighter Waxing Gibbous in Taurus) had a bright ring around it by the time it was highest in the sky during late evening. Unfortunately it looked like these clouds would be with us throughout the night. Satellite images showed them streaming up from weather systems that were bringing rain and some wintry weather to Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana, and this was slowly making its way toward the Ohio Valley.

  My priority as the new year starts is observing the annual Quadrantid Meteor Shower. This has always been a tricky one to watch. It's one of the best shows of the year; right up there with (and sometimes exceeding) the Perseid Shower in August and the Geminid Shower in December. What makes it tough is that it happens during a time of the year where clear skies and comfortable conditions are hard to come by, very early in January. And though the shower lasts for about a week and a half, from December 28 - January 7, the shower has a sharp rise and fall in activity that lasts only about 12 hours around January 3-4. Very few Quadrantids can be seen before or after that half-day surge!

  In 30+ years of amateur astronomy, I've only managed to catch one decent viewing of the Quadrantids. This was before dawn on Saturday, January 3, 2009 ... 6 years ago. I was able to see 13 meteors that morning; 9 of them in just half an hour of constant watching from my back porch, including one that was at least as bright as Jupiter and had a long-lasting, glowing train! The drawing below is one that I made that night in my journal showing the rough paths of these meteors against the constellations. I also shaded out the areas of the sky that were blocked from my view that night.


 
  This year, the Quadrantid Shower is supposed to be at peak at roughly 2h Universal Time on January 4, which is about 9:00 PM EST on the evening of Saturday, January 3 my time. From my location, the radiant of the shower (extreme northern Bootes) will actually still be below the horizon, so nothing much can be seen on Saturday evening. European observers will probably have the best prospects for seeing anything. The radiant will clear the horizon here around midnight. I figure that the strongest peak of the shower should end roughly between about 4:00 AM - 5:00 AM on Sunday morning, January 4. The morning of the 4th should be the "prime time" to try and observe it, in other words, with just some stray meteors possible on the mornings just before and after that date.

  However, there's another issue with observing the Quadrantids this year. There's going to be a bright sky because of the Moon. Full Moon actually happens 4:54 UT January 5; 11:54 PM Sunday, January 4 EST. On the morning of Sunday the 4th the Moon is going to be very high in the Southwest sky in Northern Orion, and it will be washing out the sky so that only meteors of maybe 2nd - 3rd magnitude will be bright enough to see. That's going to spoil a lot of observing, though the Quadrantids are known to produce some bright ones and even fireballs, so it might still be worth a look.

  Finally, at least locally, there are a lot of weather concerns this year. The forecast in Indianapolis calls for that system that's now far to our Southwest to move through Indiana on Saturday. It's supposed to bring temperatures warm enough to make it a "cold rain" event here for most of the day instead of a snow event (though there are warnings that there might be freezing rain briefly early on Saturday before the precipitation turns to all rain). After the rain bands pass, a cold front is supposed to bring snow showers to us by Sunday. It isn't looking likely, at this point, that I'll have any clear skies on the best night for this shower.

  I'll see what happens and post the news on this blog. I'm planning to use this website more this year than any other to keep track of what I observe (or don't observe!) since, unlike the notes I've kept in the past, it's much easier to keep track of those observations if I keep posting them here. Plus, being stored in "the cloud" makes them much easier not to lose!