Meteor Shower Year in Review for 2023

During 2023, I was able to get out on 12 different occasions to observe and count meteors. This is better than most years, and I attribute that to increased effort as well as some fortunate weather. The Moon didn't impact as many shower peaks in 2023 as in most years, so that was favorable. The good weather didn't always land on the exact peak date of the shower, so several of my sessions were away from the peak but while the shower was producing noticeable activity. The showers on my Major Meteor Showers of 2023 outlook that I didn't pursue were the Quadrantids and the Eta Aquariids, both wiped out by bright moonlight.

As I'm working on my 2024 outlook and plans, I figured I would relive this past year. I submitted my observations to the International Meteor Organization when conditions permitted, and it turns out that I spent just shy of 34 hours counting meteors (and/or waiting for meteors to count 😀). I logged 1463 meteors during these sessions. I spent more time on formal meteor counts in 2023 than in any other year, but 2023 finishes a distant second in the number of meteors I logged. On that one morning of November 18th, 2001, I counted more meteors than the years of 2023 and 2022 combined! I'm glad I'm not one of those people for whom seeing a Leonid storm "ruined" the allure of going out to watch "regular" meteor showers.

Lyrids:

The nominal peak of the Lyrids would have been April 22/23, but that date was clouded out. I got out on the morning of April 22 instead. I watched from my local site at Modoc Rim, or actually an alternate site a bit down the road as someone was parked in my usual spot. 

I observed for 2.25 hours before morning twilight on April 22nd. There was a lot of moisture in the air (the last five days have been snow, snow, snow, rain, and rain) but otherwise skies were clear. Limiting magnitude was 6.4-6.7, and I took an SQM-L reading during a break and got 21.43.

I saw 41 meteors, of which 19 were Lyrids, 16 were sporadics, and 6 were from the diffuse "Anthelion" radiant in Libra/Virgo. Overall rates were about what I expected, but as usual with meteor observing the activity wasn't consistent. There were lulls of 13, 23!, 15, and 11 minutes with no meteors interspersed with more active periods. There weren't any fireballs; the brightest meteor was an Anthelion of magnitude -1 and the most impressive meteor was also an Anthelion, slow-burning red-orange of magnitude 0 with an orange wake. Mean magnitude of the Lyrids was 2.3, of sporadics was 2.7, and of Anthelions was 1.9.

Sometimes I get the idea to just point my camera at the sky and let it click away on intervalometer to see what it captures. Usually, I don't bother. On this morning, I bothered when I shouldn't have. The camera captured 1 sporadic and a few satellites before the lens dewed up.

Southern Delta Aquariids:

Moonset left a window of morning darkness during the last week of July. I got out for two morning sessions, also at Modoc Rim, on July 28th and July 29th. On the 28th, I observed for just over 2.5 hours and saw 78 meteors including 15 Southern Delta Aquariids. Other meteors were 34 sporadics, 15 Perseids, 10 Alpha Capricornids, 3 Anthelions, and 1 Piscis Austrinid. Limiting magnitude was consistent at 6.5, with just a bit of smoke taking the edge off the conditions. Mean magnitude of the South Delta Aquariids was 2.6, of Perseids was 2.5, of Alpha Capricornids was 2.4, and of sporadics was 2.4.
On the 29th, I observed for 1.5 hours and saw 46 meteors including 12 Southern Delta Aquariids. Other meteors were 24 sporadics, 4 Perseids, 3 Alpha Capricornids, 2 Anthelions, and 1 Piscis Austrinids. Skies were similar to the previous morning. The best meteors were sporadics, a yellow -3 fireball on the 28th and a fast blue -2 on the 29th, and a peach-colored -2 Alpha Capricornid on the 28th. 

Perseids

Weather and moonlight permitting, our County Museum holds a Perseid watch every year on the grounds of the Fort Klamath historical site (Klamath County, Oregon USA). It's really popular with the public. This year with the weekend timing, it was scheduled for both Friday and Saturday nights. General schedule is an orientation and talks after sunset, followed by telescopic viewing for an hour or so, and then most people who stick around get into their lounges and sleeping bags to watch the shower. The site generally has Bortle 3 characteristics on a good night. It is really hard to get a good night during the summer these days, due to seemingly omnipresent forest fire smoke. This year, the fires were distant.

Friday night/Saturday morning August 11/12 was decent, with just a bit of haze on the horizons. I didn't have as many visitors to my scope as anticipated, but there were half a dozen scopes set up. Early targets were Vega and Arcturus through a spectroscope plus naked-eye viewing of the Tiangong space station and a Starlink train. Also, M11, M5, and M17. Other scopes went to M31 and the just-rising Saturn. I tracked down 3 comets. Comet C/2023 E1 (ATLAS) was a 10th-magnitude fuzzy moving slowly through the stars of M39. A bit faint for the general public, but a nice rich field and the best of the three comets. Comet C/2021 T4 (Lemmon) was about 9th magnitude but buried in the haze in the SW, so it mainly showed its central condensation and a bit of fuzz. Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks was maybe 11th magnitude, just a little fuzzball.

Meteor activity seemed pretty sparse early on, but there were enough for everyone to see a few. I started counting at 11:40pm and watched for 2 hours before taking a break. Those 2 hours yielded 46 Perseids and 24 other meteors. Skies were good with limiting magnitude 6.6-6.7. (Earlier after the end of astronomical twilight, I did a few SQM-L readings and averaged around 21.25.) Zenithal hourly rate for Perseids came out to about 38.

I did another 2 hours from 1:46-3:46am. I saw 70 Perseids and 26 other meteors. The skies took a bit of a hit from moonrise, but only a couple of tenths of a magnitude. Zenithal hourly rate for Perseids came out to about 48. 

There were a couple of fireball-class Perseids; nothing extremely bright. Mean magnitude of Perseids was 2.3, of sporadic meteors was 3.2, and the most prolific minor shower was the Kappa Cygnids--I saw 7 of those over the 4 hours.

Overall, the Perseids put on an average to below-average show for the morning before the peak.

For Saturday night/Sunday morning August 12/13, the forecast was pretty bad, with smoke blowing in. But it cleared off enough that it was only noticeable near the horizon. After the star party goodness, I started counting at 11:16pm. My first session lasted 1.38 hours and featured 51 Perseids and 13 other meteors. The brightest meteor was a -3 Perseid, low on the horizon. ZHR for the Perseids for this session was about 76. Limiting magnitude hovered around 6.5, as it would for the rest of the night.

My second session started at 12:46am and lasted just over 2 hours. I saw 111 Perseids and 34 other meteors including 6 Southern Delta Aquariids. A magnitude -4 Perseid with a terminal burst and a persistent train was among 9 Perseids in the negative magnitudes. Perseid ZHR for this session was about 82.

After a short break, during which I also set up my camera, I started my final session, which lasted from 3:09 to 4:45am. Perseid rates were really good, and I saw 145 over the 1.6 hours of the session along with 21 other meteors. Twilight started really brightening the sky after 4:39am, but the Perseids were really numerous right up until then. I saw 99 in that hour from 3:39-4:39, with 55 in the 30 minutes from 4:09-4:39 and 14 in the 5-minute period from 4:29-4:34. ZHR for the 1.5 hours that were less affected by twilight was about 106. Mean Perseid magnitude was a bright 1.8 (compared to the sporadics at magnitude 2.8). There were 10 Perseids in the negative magnitudes, including one with a flashbulb-like terminal burst.

I've seen a lot of good Perseid showers, and this joins the ranks as another good one. I even managed to catch some on the camera, despite some vignetting from my lens hood not being fully seated.

A cropped image shows 11 Perseids near the radiant.

Orionids

The predicted peak of the Orionids was Sunday morning, October 22nd. The forecast was bad for that one, so I decided to go out on Friday and Saturday mornings instead. As it turned out, I might have been able to observe some on Sunday as well, but I used my energy for hiking on Saturday and wasn't able to answer the bell. 

On Thursday night/Friday morning, I headed out to Willow Valley Reservoir, a dark site about 70 minutes from home. I planned to watch the double shadow transit on Jupiter, count meteors for two hours, take a half-hour break to look at comet C/2023 H2 (Lemmon), and then count meteors for another 2 hours. Clear Sky Chart showed a chance of clouds after 4am, and those got me during my last meteor session. So I ended up observing meteors for 2.5 hours. Skies are never pristine these days--there's always something burning, whether planned or unplanned. But they were decent with a limiting magnitude averaging 6.8. In 2.5 hours, I saw 40 Orionids, 18 sporadics, 11 Southern Taurids, and 5 Epsilon Geminids. Mean magnitude of the Orionids was 2.6, and of the sporadics was a rather bright 2.3. Bright meteors were sparse; perhaps the best ones were a yellow sporadic fireball low in the southwest, and a short -1 Epsilon Geminid with a flashbulb appearance. A rough Orionid ZHR for the whole session (8:30-11:34 UT, break from 10:30-11:04) was 16, the correction for limiting magnitude just about canceling out the correction for zenith distance.

On Saturday morning, I got up early and headed to Modoc Rim, only 15 minutes from home. There was some fog in addition to the smoke, but this site got me above the fog, and the smoke wasn't bad. Limiting magnitude averaged 6.6. I got in my planned 2 hours of meteor observing. I thought about stretching it a bit into twilight, but my perception was flagging so I decided to get some sleep before my hike. Activity was slightly better than the previous morning but broadly similar except for fewer Taurids. In 2 hours, I saw 35 Orionids, 21 sporadics, 2 Northern Taurids, 2 Southern Taurids, and 5 Epsilon Geminids. Mean magnitude of both Orionids and sporadics was 2.6. The only negative magnitude meteor was an Orionid of magnitude -1. Rough Orionid ZHR for the session (10:55-12:55 UT) was 18.

Leonids

There was an interesting prediction that we might have a slight outburst of Leonids on the morning of November 21st, but of course that day was cloudy. The morning that I was able to get out was the 17th, when the nominal peak of the shower was on the 18th, another cloudy day. 

I got in one session on the morning of the 17th and saw 12 Leonids in 98 minutes. Skies were really nice for about a half an hour, with the gegenschein visible near the Pleiades. Then fog came in and interrupted my watch. It rolled out again before twilight, but the skies weren't nearly as crisp (although still nice). In addition to the 12 Leonids, I saw 31 non-Leonids, so the Leonids were a pretty minor component of the activity. (If you're watching the sky for meteors under dark, transparent conditions on a November morning, you should see a good number of meteors per hour.) I didn't see any really bright meteors. 1 Leonid, 2 Northern Taurids, and 2 sporadics reached magnitude 0.

Geminids

Oh, the Geminids. Many people's favorite meteor shower, and from what I've seen of them they do have a broad activity profile and a favorable brightness profile. But the weather usually messes them up for me. This year, the lack of moonlight was ideal, and when the forecast looked iffy a week or so beforehand ("iffy" being a lot better than most years) I decided to take a couple of days off in the middle of the week to see what I could see. I reasoned that I might be able to find clear skies within a few hours, even if I didn't have them at home. The weather forecast got more complicated, and it turned out that there wasn't anywhere nearby that was a slam-dunk as far as being clear throughout the activity period. But I ended up essentially commuting to Willow Valley Reservoir on three straight days, and came away with some observations between the clouds.

I needed to attend a couple of holiday events on the evening of Tuesday, December 12th. Afterward, I checked the forecast and it looked like it might cloud up near home. It looked like it might be clear farther east, at least for a while, so I packed up to go to Willow Valley. After all, that's what I would have done had it been clear all over. When I got there after midnight, I was disappointed in the transparency of the sky. High cirrus clouds were moving through, but the darkness of the site won me over and I decided to make a long morning of it. It turned out to be 5 hours long!

My first counting session on the morning of the 13th lasted for 2.5 hours from 832-1102 UT (12:32-3:02am PST). Limiting magnitude averaged 6.5 with that below-average transparency. I counted 83 Geminids and 44 other meteors. There were a couple of Geminid fireballs of -4 and -5, both bluish. One of these seemed to have a large head. Perhaps even more impressive was a fast Sigma Hydrid fireball that exploded in a terminal burst below Jupiter and left a persistent train. 

After a short break, I returned to counting at 1120 UT and counted for the next 1.5 hours. I saw 69 Geminids and 26 other meteors. There was one Geminid fireball of magnitude -3, bluish with a short wake.

I did one last hour before morning twilight brightened the sky, from 1258-1358 UT. This session featured 45 Geminids and 22 other meteors. The clear highlight was a blue -7 Geminid fireball that exploded with a terminal burst in Draco. 

Overall, this was a good early Geminid session, and rates were about what I expected. Geminids were reasonably bright with a mean magnitude of 2.3, especially given that pre-maximum Geminids tend to be fainter on average. Final tallies for the morning were 197 Geminids, 7 Sigma Hydrids, 4 Comae Berenicids, 4 December Monocerotids, 4 Anthelions, and 72 sporadics.

High clouds moved in for most of the day on Wednesday. The forecasts showed a possibility of clearing at some point Thursday morning, and I decided to give it a go despite overcast conditions. Once I arrived at Willow Valley, with only a few bright stars and Jupiter visible, I bedded down in my car. My first alarm check yielded nothing, and my second at around 2am presented me with a very hazy sky but more stars visible. I did a casual count for 23 minutes and saw 21 Geminids and 2 other meteors in variably poor conditions. After that, a thick dark cloud band moved through, but the back edge seemed to bring clear sky with it. It still wasn't great--this is a Bortle 2/3 site where I've gotten limiting magnitudes of 7.1 or better, and this morning it was magnitude 5.9-6.3 and worse toward the horizon. I saw 49 Geminids and 6 other meteors in 36 minutes between 1102-1138 UT (3:02am-3:38am PST) before another cloud band moved through. After a 20-minute break, I was able to watch for an uninterrupted hour under somewhat worse skies. From 1156-1256 UT (3:56am-4:56am PST), I saw 65 Geminids and 16 other meteors. After that, the clouds closed in again. A total of 114 Geminids in 1.57 hours meant higher rates than the previous morning despite the less favorable conditions. Despite being near peak activity, the Geminids weren't especially bright, and I only saw one Geminid fireball.

Thursday afternoon and evening were variably cloudy. I wanted to go out early to try to catch some Geminid earthgrazers, but my first stop was along the highway and the car headlights were too obnoxious. I did see one nice earthgrazing Geminid. I decided to hit Willow Valley again, although the remnants of a cloud band looked to be just south of it on the satellite. I saw another bright Geminid while I was stopped at a stop sign in town, and another a bit out of town. When I arrived at Willow Valley, the skies were better than the previous nights, but the horizons were hazy. I set up my camera with a field from Gemini through Orion, hoping to catch some photogenic meteors, and then started counting. The Geminids seemed to be avoiding my camera and falling northward into the feet of Ursa Major. I did catch a few nice ones, including a bright white near-fireball that I decided to use for my 2024 meteor shower outlook cover image. 

As far as the visual show, I counted 66 Geminids and 22 other meteors in 2.75 hours between 420-726 UT (8:20 - 11:26pm PST). With the radiant rather low in the sky, and the peak probably happening earlier in the day, that was about what I expected. Post-maximum Geminids are typically brighter with more fireballs, but I didn't see any true fireballs this evening. Overall, the Geminids were brighter, with a mean magnitude of 1.5. During a break, I adjusted my camera to point north instead of south of the radiant. It did seem to work, although I set my ISO to 6400 for framing and forgot to adjust it down. So the images had more noise and artifacts, but it was easier to pick out the meteors without doing any adjustments.

Ursids

I don't always feature the Ursids on my Major Meteor Showers page. They seem to have a very short duration. When I'm planning meteor counts, I want to go out when I think I'll see at least 15 meteors per hour total and at least 5 per hour from the most active shower. When meteors are few and far between, a meteor count is boring and draining. When no shower is producing a significant number of meteors, data from visual counts loses some of its usefulness. Minor showers are more reliably tracked via multi-station video or meteor radar, methods that can pinpoint radiants and identify shower meteors by their orbital elements. In visual counting, we are relying on alignment with a known shower radiant and estimates of path length and speed. The chance of erroneously classifying a meteor is relatively high. In a small sample, misidentifications can be significant. 

Anyway, I think the Ursids are often a minor shower. Because of a prediction of a possible outburst this year, I moved them to my Major Meteor Showers page. I was able to get out on the morning of their predicted peak, December 22nd. I went out to Willow Valley Reservoir again. I would have preferred a Modoc Rim site, since I had a tiring workday ahead, but my local environs were shrouded in dense fog. Actually, the fog didn't loosen its grip until I was within a few miles of Willow Valley. Skies were similar to those on the Geminid session of December 14/15--clear but with reduced transparency and a limiting magnitude around 6.5-6.6. 

The Ursids performed like a fringe major shower--I counted 16 in 2.88 hours between 1118-1418 UT (3:18-6:18am PST). I didn't see anything that pointed to an outburst. The minor Comae Berenicids shower performed almost as well with 14 meteors. I added 32 sporadics for a total of 62 meteors, so the session met my criteria for number of meteors. I didn't see any fireballs: a -1 Ursid was the brightest meteor. Brighter Ursids do have a distinctive appearance. They tend to be reddish, and despite having a similar speed to the Geminids are more likely to leave a wake or short persistent train behind. It wasn't a scintillating session, but it's rare that I get to observe the Ursids. This is only the third time that I've had a successful session around the peak of the Ursids.