Last night I turned in late to bed, around 2 AM, eastern time, and doing my security check I noticed a lot of what appeared to be lightening bugs flying around the top of the mountain behind my house. Lightening bugs? It's winter and in the mid - 20's!!! I went outside to see what was going on and witnessed an epic meteor shower in progress with what I would estimate to be around 20 to 30 per second meteors pouring out of the NW sky traveling to the NE, and that is with cloud cover last night. It looked like Star Wars on steroids or multiple machineguns blazing away with tracers! They were emanating from about 8 to 10 fingers above the horizon, estimated because of another mountain in that direction. Occaisonally I saw glowing stuff falling down from the sky into the woods, that would hit tree branches and then go straight down to the ground. This was kind of scary with all the fires we have had here in East Tennessee recently, though it had rained the day before. Also all the foxfire on the mountain was activated and glowing with it's weird green glow, several hundred spots, kind of unusual too, don't know if that's connected or not. I debated calling the county fire department, but decided to wait to see if anything actually caught ablaze, not wanting to roll those guys out of bed without good reason, as most are volunteers and work day jobs. I woke my wife up at 2:30 to have a look, she was stunned by the display, and stayed up watching until around 4. This continued unabated until 5, when I finally went to bed. Not a word of any such activity reported by any media this morning, and no reports of any activity in any space weather web sites. Any Monkeys see this last night???
Ursids. Common this time of year. Geminids is more active and stronger, which we just left last week and it could be a bit of a crossover. Meteor Activity Outlook for December 17-23, 2016 Ursids Active from December 17th to December 23rd The Ursids are often neglected due to the fact it peaks just before Christmas and the rates are much less than the Geminds, which peaks just a week before the Ursids. Observers will normally see 5-10 Ursids per hour during the late morning hours on the date of maximum activity. There have been occasional outbursts when rates have exceeded 25 per hour. These outbursts appear unrelated to the perihelion dates of comet 8P/Tuttle. This shower is strictly a northern hemisphere event as the radiant fails to clear the horizon or does so simultaneously with the start of morning twilight as seen from the southern tropics. Radiant: 14:28 +74.8° - ZHR: 10 - Velocity: 20 miles/sec (medium - 32km/sec) - Parent Object: 8P/Tuttle Also, here's the calendar if you're interested in watching more frequently: Meteor Shower Calendar
I looked up Ursids last night and they are supposed to eminate from the little dipper, these were coming from the NW horizon, and Gemini is not in this area either. 20 - 30 per SECOND, not hourly, it was massive and unabated for the 3 hours I watched. I've witnessed meteor showers before and never even imagined anything like this.
The rate is not by each meteor, but by the salvo (which can have countless meteorites in each one) Also, video is needed, or it did not happen
The kid in me often prefers the frosted side, I mean, you *could* choose to believe it was planet Nibiru coming to crash into Earth and everything is coming to an end because the aliens at Area 51 said so.... But the adult in me also likes the whole wheat gluten free goodness of just trusting it was yet another meteor shower event.
