2007 Aurigids Shower

The Aurigids are a low activity shower that occasionally shows outbursts as we pass through dense debris streams (in 1935, 1986, and 1994). The source of the debris is Comet Kiess (C/1911 N1), a long period comet with a 2000 year orbit. It was predicted that in 2007 we would encounter a stream of debris left behind when the comet passed near the Earth in about 83 BCE. This prediction proved accurate.

This is a composite image of 49 meteors collected between sunset on August 31 through sunrise on September 1. Nearly all the events happened between 04:40 and 05:40 MDT, so the radiant of the shower is quite obvious in the image (it is shown at its UT 11:30, or MDT 5:30 position).

Long string-like images above and below the radiant aren't meteors, but are stars or planets captured as they traveled across the sky over many hours. Capella is just above the radiant, Mars and Betelgeuse can be seen below. The bright streak below and to the right of center is the Moon. The white lines along the bottom are the inserted timecode data. In the composite, all the times overlap each other making them unreadable.

Shower Meteor Frequency

This chart plots the distribution over the same time range for all three reporting cameras. The Cloudbait and Guffey cameras are only about 5 km apart, so they largely recorded the same part of the sky. The Guffey camera is less sensitive, which is why fewer events were recorded. The Montrose camera is located 209 km west of Cloudbait, so these cameras caught mostly different meteors, although there is some overlap. All three cameras show two peaks of activity, at UT 11:15-11:20 and 11:30-11:35.