Meteor Shower - Ursids - Dec. 16 to Dec. 26 - Personal Activity
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This is a personal challenge activity. If you have questions, need help, or want to organize with other members feel free to post comments below.
The International Meteor Organization has this to say...
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.In 2024, a half-illuminated moon will be present in the morning sky and will obscure the fainter meteors.
Shower details - Radiant: 14:38 +75.4° - ZHR: 10 - Velocity: 20.5 miles/sec (medium - 33.1km/sec) - Parent Object: 8P/Tuttle
Next Peak - The Ursids will next peak on the Dec 21-22, 2025 night. On this night, the moon will be 3% full.
Nature Nerds of Austin has this to say...
"Where is a good place to see the meteor shower?"
Good question, the darker the better. For the Austin area going either E or W will provide darker skies. I'd suggest looking at a light pollution map to help focus on areas as well.
https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/ https://darksitefinder.com/
https://www.cleardarksky.com/maps/lp/large_light_pollution_map.html
https://djlorenz.github.io/astronomy/lp2006/overlay/dark.html
https://www.darkskymap.com/
Because meteor showers are pieces of rock and dust on an orbit that intersects Earth's orbit at some point in time and space the best time to pick as the middle of your observing window is 2am local. This is because of the way the sun, the earth, and the meteor shower interact. From sundown to 2am the light gets progressively darker and after 2am it gets progressively lighter until you hit sunrise.
You'll want a good low sitting chair that has a lot of lean back. You basically want to lay back and just stare at the sky unfocused until you see an event. They can last from very short blips to long streaks lasting several seconds. If you're lucky you'll see an air burst where a large bolide comes apart in a shower, they are extremely rare.
The best binoculars to use for stargazing are 25x70 but smaller ones will work. Larger ones have too much magnification and there is a lot of jitter just from your natural body motion so the image is not stable. Binoculars are not a lot of use for meteor showers.
The two best places to get basic information are IMO and AMS.
IMO Shower Calendar -- https://www.imo.net/resources/calendar/
AMS Shower Calendar -- https://www.amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/meteor-shower-calendar/
Austin Astronomical Society (AAS) - They have many activities through the year. Consider becoming a member. -- https://austinastro.org/
You should also use Stellarium to help map out the date/time/and sky position of the expected source of the shower for a given date. BE ADVISED meteor showers are EXTREMELY UNPREDICTABLE. So don't expect to go out there and see something in the first 15 minutes. You could be out there all night and not see anything. Other nights you may get lucky and see a shower that has a high rate.
Stellarium has the ability to turn the screen red so you can keep it live if you have a laptop at your observing site.
Stellarium -- https://stellarium.org/