Begin: 1:00 AM EDT (5:00 UT). End: 4:10 AM EDT (8:10 UT)
Location: Backyard patio at Home. Longitude = 86° 03' 01" W, Latitude = 39° 39' 35", Elevation = 255 meters.
Observed Showers:
Kappa Cygnids (KCG) 284° +58°
Alpha Capricornids (CAP) 308° -09°
Anthelion (ANT) 323° -12°
Delta Aquariids (SDA) 344° -15°
Perseids (PER) 034° +55°
(No plotting tonight, only visual counting.)
Details:
Period 1:
Time: 1:00 AM EDT - 2:05 AM EDT (0500 - 0605 UT Aug. 3)
Field: 330° +30° (Between Cygnus and Pegasus)
Teff: 1.050, F: 1.000, LM = 4.50 (roughly)
Meteor 1 - 1:00 AM (0500), CAP, 0.0 mag., Speed = 2, Wake seen, Glowing train lasted about 1 second, Whitish? Nice one!
Meteor 2 - 1:39 AM (0539), SDA, +1.0 mag., Speed = 2-3, Wake seen, No Train, Blue-White. Scudded along close to the East horizon.
Meteor 3 - 1:41 AM (0541), PER, +2.0 mag., Speed = 4, No Wake, No Train, No Color Noted. First Perseid of the season!
Period 2:
Time: 2:35 AM EDT - 4:10 EDT (0635 - 0810 UT Aug. 3)
Field: 0° +30° (Near Alpha Andromedae)
Teff: 1.083, F: 1.425, LM = 4.50 (roughly)
Meteor 1 - 2:56 AM (0656), Sporadic, +2.5 - +3.0 mag., Speed = 5, No Wake, No Train, No Color Noted. Like a very fast and faint point of light. If the path were traced back the radiant would probably be Far Western Pegasus or Eastern Aquila. Too fast to count it as an Anthelion.
Meteor 2 - 3:12 AM (0712), Sporadic, +2.0 - +2.5 mag., Speed = 4 -5, No Wake, No Train, No Color Noted. Originally in my recording I thought this could have been a Kappa Cygnid. However, the speed I estimated seems way too high for this and the radiant seems too far east; closer to the middle of Cygnus than the area between Cygnus and Draco. This meteor had a quick little flare right at the end after it seemed to end!
Meteor 3 - 3:26 AM (0726), Sporadic, +3.0 mag., Speed = 3, No Wake, No Train, No Color Noted. When traced back the radiant for this one would have been more in the "eastern wing" of Cygnus but not too close to where the Kappa Cygnid radiant lies. It was more between the "forelegs" of Pegasus and Cygnus.
Meteor 4 - 3:46 AM (0746), PER, +2.0 mag., Speed = 4, Wake seen, Glowing Train about one half second.
Meteor 5 - 4:06 AM (0806), SDA, 0.0 mag., Speed = 3, Wake seen, Glowing Train lasted about a second. Maybe the nicest meteor of the night besides the first one seen!
Notes:
The Waxing Moon (just a day away from First Quarter) was in Eastern Virgo between Spica to its West and Mars to its East. Moonset was around 12:05 AM (0505 UT Aug. 3). The Moon looked yellowish long before setting and rusty red when it was getting close to the horizon due to haze/smoke in the air. There were some scattered low clouds now and then before midnight and through 12:45 AM, but it was clear and cloud-free during the whole time I was outside. There may have been light fog in the air that slowly increased through the night. We had that ever-present murky haze in the sky that has plagued Central Indiana for several days, that I'm fairly sure is partly or mostly due to smoke high in the atmosphere brought in by weather systems from the US West Coast. The north and west sky were bright looking and a faint salmon color. This was probably from city lights reflected off fog and haze. The low horizons in general were more lit up than the rest of the sky.
My Limiting Magnitude estimate is based on being able to discern 4 stars in Area #7 (4.23) and 5 stars in Area #14 (4.73). Average of these two areas = 4.48. My Starry Nights planetarium program also lists Lambda Cygni as 4.50 magnitude and this star could usually be seen, faintly. This is rough but with the hazy conditions I'll stay with 4.50 mag.
I was in the lawn chair looking high in the east. I used the counting method only and the digital voice recorder. During the first session I was okay to start with just wearing jeans and a T shirt, but started to feel chilled by the end of the session. So during the second session I put on a hooded sweatshirt. There was little to no breeze all night but it was pretty dewy and I think this added to the chill. I had an all-sky chart with me printed from the AMS Website showing the radiant positions of the active showers.
1:00 AM - 67°F, Dew Point = 61°F, Humidity = 81%, Wind = Northwest at 6 mph, Pressure = 30.13"
4:00 AM - 65°F, Dew Point = 60°F, Humidity = 84%, Wind = Calm, Pressure = 30.12"
It was a noisy night! Lots of fire truck sirens nearby at the very start. There was a yard party going on two houses to my south, and it still hadn't quite wrapped up by the time I was finished. Loud kids and adults during the first session and loud intoxicated adults during the second. Awful generic hip hop music blaring from a radio during both sessions! Ugh! That yard was lit up from time to time and there was a bonfire burning, but I was sitting low enough that the lights were obscured by the privacy fence and the smoke seemed to go straight up and wasn't a problem. Besides that, there was a real chorus of singing insects out there; chirping Crickets and whirring and buzzing Long-Horned Grasshoppers including a few Katydids. There were a few Fireflies at least early on, but not many. Mosquitoes were a little bit of an issue, but I had plenty of repellent on. No aircraft were seen tonight while I was outside (we seem to have a "Sunday loll" here before dawn).
The Pleiades were visible from over the roof of our house from about 3:55 AM on, even though I was lying in the lawn chair near the patio edge, just a couple of feet from the ground. When I'd started tonight the Great Square of Pegasus was just clearing the roof from that vantage point.
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