Well, the Quadrantids were a drizzle at best for me – either this “shower” came early, or came late, or didn’t come at all. Haven’t seen other reports yet – but it wasn’t there for me. And now, too late, I discover there’s a new “app” designed by NASA to help you record what you see during a meteor shower and automatically send it to NASA to help their research!
Wow! Maybe that’s why it held off – I wasn’t properly prepared! 
Seriously folks, I saw one great Quadrantid meteor – it was fabulous – right up there with the best half dozen of meteors I’ve seen in more than half a century of sky watching. It came at 10:15 pm last night as I boldly stepped out onto the deck in the 18-degree cold – sub zero, really, with the strong wind we had – and bang, I was warmed up by a meteor that took so long to go from the area of the Great Bear to somewhere near Procyon that I could have called you and told you to look had I your number and my phone handy.
It was a fireball of at least magnitude -2 – the brightness of Jupiter. And sooo slow – well, I would estimate it took three seconds to cross the sky, but who’s counting/ – and it looked, for all the world, like a plane going down in flames. And no sound. Just an eerie silence as it flared near the end. And I thought “what a great way to begin a night of meteor observing – yes, and to end it. I should have quit when I was ahead. I stayed out about 15 minutes and saw no more and rather than freeze I came in and settled down at the sliding glass door = room lights off of course – where I could see a good segment of sky to the northeast and I watched and saw nothing. Now I won’t say I watched until midnight. I wrote the time downs and I took breaks – but I watched a lot and amidst the moonlight, saw nothing.
So some time after midnight I curled up on the couch and went to sleep and awoke about 2:30 am. Ahhh – still clear, despite the forecast. OK – I got really warmly dressed ( it was now 15-degrees Fahrenheit) and went out again. And to make a long story short in a solid half hour of being out and looking up I saw three meteors – a short little dude near the Dipper again, now very high in the north, a really decent one in the northwest that zipped towards Capella, and another very nice one in the south heading down below Leo.
All I observed were observed when outside – though I looked for much longer stretches from inside – always giving it at least 20 minute watches. Now inside I maybe lost half a magnitude – but that still gave me magnitude 4.5 skies – very decent for meteor watching.
I NEVER see anything like the advanced predictions for various meteor showers. But I consider a good shower one where I can see about 20 an hour – and this could generously be put at 6 an hour for me.
Now about that APP – it looks intriguing. I learned about it on Spaceweather.com this morning. It’s put out by the NASA folks who keep track of meteors. Here’s part of the NASA pitch for the APP which you can download from the APP Store at Apple for free.
Surprising but true: Every day, on average, more than 40 tons of meteoroids strike our planet. Most are tiny specks of comet dust that disintegrate harmlessly high up in Earth’s atmosphere, producing a slow drizzle of meteors in the night sky. Bigger chunks of asteroid and comet debris yield dozens of nightly fireballs around the globe. Some are large enough to pepper the ground with actual meteorites.
With so much “stuff” zeroing in on our planet, NASA could use some help keeping track of it all.
Enter the Meteor Counter–a new iPhone app designed to harness the power of citizen scientists to keep track of meteoroids.
“Using our app, people from all walks of life can contribute to authentic NASA research,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, which sponsored the project. “The data will help us discover new meteor showers, pinpoint comet debris streams, and map the distribution of meteoroids around Earth’s orbit.”
Whenever you go outside for a bit of stargazing, take your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch with you, advises Cooke. Start the Meteor Counter, lie down in a safe dark place, and be alert for shooting stars.
The Meteor Counter operates using an intuitive “piano key” interface. Every time you see a meteor, simply tap the key corresponding to its brightness. Keys on the left correspond to dim meteors—barely visible to the naked eye; keys on the right denote jaw-dropping fireballs.
With each keytap, the Meteor Counter records critical data such as the time you saw the meteor, the meteor’s magnitude, and your location. You can even turn on an optional voice recorder to capture your own description of events. Experts could comment on the trajectory and radiant of the meteor, while novices might prefer to simply shout out–”wow!”
Afterward, these data are automatically uploaded to NASA researchers for analysis.
Hey, is that cool – or what? Well, it would have been freezingly cool this morning. Too cool for me – and too cool for the Quadrantids, apparently. Hope others had better luck. Me -I’m heading off to the APP store to get the Meteor APP and give it a try. As NASA urged:
Cooke encourages citizen scientists everywhere to try it out.
“The app is available free of charge in Apple’s app store,” he says. “Just search for Meteor Counter, and let the observing begin.”
