Return of a “lost” meteor shower

[Nick James]

Unfortunately much of the country was under low cloud last night but some areas were clear (and very cold) and there is no sign that there was any significant outburst of meteors from the 1649 Bielid dust trail (https://britastro.org/section_news_item/the-return-of-a-lost-meteor-shower). The GMN trajectory solver hasn’t reached the expected time of the outburst yet so we need to wait for a few more days before we can be sure. These plots:

https://nickdjames.com/meteor/2023/202312/202311.png
https://nickdjames.com/meteor/2023/202312/202312.png

show the radiants of events taken from the GMN database for November and December with a cross marking the position of the predicted outburst radiant. The grid on this plot is 5 deg in declination and 10 deg in RA and it is “backwards”, i.e. looking from outside towards the Earth. The traditional Andromedid stream is the clump below and to the left of the cross. This plot shows a zoomed up view of the predicted radiant area for events in December so far:

https://nickdjames.com/meteor/2023/202312/oAND2023.png

The December plot data currently goes to 15:23 UTC on Dec 2. I’ll update it as the database gets updated.

If you have clear skies it is worth observing for the next few nights just in case anything shows up.

[Duncan Hale-Sutton]

I went out at about 11.30pm last night as the fog had lifted but I can confirm that I didn’t see a single meteor during the 20 mins or so that I stood in the garden. The moon was well up by then which may have hidden fainter ones. I also went out Friday night for about half an hour around 7pm but I only saw one sporadic.

[James Lancashire]

I also wondered how bright these meteors would be. From the historic shower/storm the conditions might favour numerous & bright events. Radio data will be interesting .. or nil!

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