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!