Lmst

A fairly underwhelming shot of the Eta Aquariids meteor shower, featuring a touch of green airglow, a very bright Venus, and two tiny meteors.

#space #astro #astrophotography #venus #meteor #meteorshower #etaaquariids #igotupat4amforthis

A view of the night sky including some green airglow, Venus, and two tiny meteor streaks as part of the Eta Aquariids shower.

After complaining about lack of #etaaquariids meteor shower reporting, here’s our first hand report from last night (early this morning). Our viewing was from 3-4:30 am 6th may - Brisbane Australia.

Observations:

We observed 10 short lived meteors (less than a handspan at arms length) and 3 longer trails (2+ hand spans). We saw these in 1.5 hours. We possibly also saw an additional 4-5 very faint ones in the light polluted area of the sky but we can’t confirm (people thought they saw something).
most meteors were quite faint. Even the brightest trails were not super bright.
Best viewing was about 4am local time with best trails almost straight over head and slightly to the north and south.

Observing Location:

We drove 40 minutes west of Brisbane CBD to escape the worst light pollution. Driving north or south would have been better.
the sky was quite light polluted by Brisbane to the east - at 3 am we couldn’t see any stars below Saturn and it had a clear blueish hue from the city.
Milky Way was clearly visible overhead so meteors abover 45 degrees were more visible.
Most Meteors won’t be visible in a light polluted sky.
I Estimate if we stayed in the suburbs, our sky has a bright hazy light pollution colour - we’d probably be lucky to see 2-3/hour.

Tonight:

ABC news table showed a greater peak tonight (Tuesday morning) and similar Wednesday morning. See graph 1/3 of the way down in this article.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-05-03/2024-eta-aquariids-australia-meteor-shower/103784186

Tips: forget about the radiant. Lie down with your feet pointed east. Relaxedly scan the sky from horizon to horizon starting straight up and scanning down toward your feet. Enjoy the stars. You’ll see any peripheral vision movement pretty easily.

Tips: if you are within 50km of a major city, wake up at 2am. Check for any haze or cloud. And indication that your seeing conditions aren’t great, go back to bed (2 meteors aren’t worth it).

Be sure he change you want to see! :) (https://infosec.exchange/@nikolaihampton/112387376955555720)