American Meteor Society
Much to the disappointment of all, it appears that Comet 209P/Linear has been dust poor for a long time as very few meteors have been reported during the expected maximum last night and this morning. While scientists can pinpoint the time in which the Earth intercepts the past paths of these comets, they cannot tell exactly how much material occupies each orbit. They suspected dust would be less than normal therefore forecasts were revised downward from storm levels. No one suspected that the show would actually be as poor as it was. This is most unfortunate as circumstances were nearly perfect for observers in North America. These outbursts are few and far between. Unless something new is discovered, the next possible outbursts are from the Beta Hydrusids in 2020 and the Tau Herculids in 2022. Like the Camelopardalids, these predictions are just possibilities and certainly not sure bets.
As seen below, photographer Wade Earle managed to capture a few Camelopardalid meteors before a thunderstorm obscured his skies.
Camelopardalid Meteors
Robert, just saw your post http://www.amsmeteors.org/2014/05/camelopardalid-results/ and wanted to comment. We were out Thursday evening (05/22) scouting for a dark location to photograph the LINEAR meteor shower and saw 15-20 meteors in the north sky between 11pm and midnight CT. We were very surprised to see this, especially since it was a day early of the expected main event. Something else we found is that many of the meteors we saw appeared to be traveling from south to north – not at all what we expected. Friday night was more of the same, except that we didn’t see as many meteors Friday evening as we had on Thursday. But again, some appeared to come from the south. We did get some pictures if you’re interested.
I captured a really nice one with my camera that even left a smoke trail. I made an animated gif out of the frames and posted it to my blog here: http://www.ericteske.com/2014/05/camelopardalids-meteor-fireball-with.html I had no idea the smoke trails stuck around that long after the flash – like 2 minutes! Camelopardalids meteor photo on my blog.
I got some shots of the same meteor over Michigan as Eric did from the previous post.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10204251920122701