Quadrantid Meteor Shower This Week

Captain Foobar writes: "The little-known but very active Quadrantid meteor shower will be visible over most of the U.S. (clear skies permitting) in the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday, January 3, 2001. The peak is supposed to occur in a two-hour block around 7:00am Eastern time (viewing will be limited due to sunrise), 4:00am Pacific time (viewing should be quite good). Details are here." Note that CNN says the best viewing isn't early Wednesday morning, but late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning.

Comments

CNN

[Fervent]

Note that CNN says the best viewing isn't early Wednesday morning, but late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning.

They also said Bush was president a month early...

I'm putting my money on the site with "space" and "science" in its domain name.

Man, don't mess with these guys..

[Rombuu]

Quadrantid meteors take their name from an obsolete constellation, Quadrans Muralis, found in early 19th-century star atlases between Draco, Hercules, and Bootes. It was removed, along with a few other constellations, from crowded sky maps in 1922 when the International Astronomical Union adopted the modern list of 88 officially-recognized constellations.

Hey, nice constellation you have there... be a shame if something happened to it...

Detecting meteors with radio

[Wizard of OS]

While watching meteors still rocks, there is a nice mechanism that detects meteors using radiowaves. In short, you tune your radio to a radiostation that you wouldn't normally receive (because it's below the horizon). Then you wait for a meteor. When one shows up, it leaves a ionized trail, which will reflect the radio waves: you hear the meteor coming by!

More information: http://www.imo.net/radio/
I am member of a small observatory in the Netherlands. We are quite active during meteor showers, for a report of the last Leonids shower, visit http://www.lansbergen.demon.nl/uk/meteors/leonid20 00.html(some nice pictures are included :)

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Re:Obsolete constellation?

[hey!]

To the casual observer, a constellation is a striking pattern of stars, such as the Big Dipper. Ancient astronomers worked this way too. Ptolemy cataloged 48 constellations and over 1000 stars.

Constellations eventually became signposts or indications to professional astronomers of the rough neighborhood in the sky that an object belongs in. Thus the object M31 at 00:42:7 RA +41 : 16 dec is commonly referred to as the Great Nebula in Andromeda, or nowadays the Andromeda Galaxy. Of course once you start down this path, it is only a matter of time before you want to be able to describe everything in this way -- as being "in" a constellation.

Over the years, constellations to the professional astronomomer have become contiguous areas of the sky which conincidentally may contain a striking pattern of stars such as the Saggitarius teapot. It was only a matter of time before celestial atlas makers decided that for completeness sake that every piece of the sky should belong to one and only one constellation. Sometimes they did this by creating "new" constellations (Quadrans Muralis was one of these) to cover regions of the sky with no bright stars at all and which could not conveniently be tucked in with a nearby traditional one. These often have the names of scientific or astronomical instruments, such as (in this case) the meridian mural quadrant, an instrument that saw a short period of usage in the early to mid 17th c. Other atlas makers designated constellations to honor political or personal patrons (George III, Frederick II, Charles II had this honor, which the IAU rescinded in '22).

Of course, since each atlas maker did this differently, then it wasn't always clear how to designate an object this way if it fell between two star patterns or in an area of the sky with no star patterns nearby. The celestial coordinates do unambiguously mark an object's location, but scientific publications are incredible sticklers for standardization, so in 1922 the International Astronomer's Union drew up a set of constellation boundaries that completely tile the sky (including the Southern Hemisphere).

During this process small ones such as Quadrans Muralis were dropped if they had little historical or scientific significance.

Certain equally small constellations such as Canes Minor and Canes Venatici were kept, in the former case because it is well known and contians two very bright stars. Canes Venatici was kept although it is relatively unknown and contains no bright stars at all, because it contains many spectacular nebulae such as the M3 globular cluster and M51 "Whirlpool" galaxy. It's origins are also ancient and therefore it has historical significance. Eliminating it would presumably render a great deal of astronomical papers confusing if it were dropped.

In all probablity, the Quadrans Muralis constellation contains no objects that, in 1922, had a large body of publications. Furthermore it lacked any historical significance since it was introduced in the 17th century. By way of contrast, Vulpecula (the fox) is for the most part equally obscure and only contains one star worthy of a Bayer Greek letter (alpha), which is of a paltry 4.4 magnitude. However it contais M27, the Dumbell nebula, and a number of nebulae and star clusters. Probably my next favorite star cluster after the Pleides is in this constellation -- Brocchi's cluster, colloquially known as the "Coathanger cluster". To me it look's like the fancy unical capital "T" JRR Tolkien signed his name with.

A quick look in my star atlas shows that the region formerly occupied by Quadrans Muralis is about as uninteresting a spot as you can pick on the celestial sphere -- just three 4-5 magnitude stars (two of these are double but this is unremarkable in itself) and depending on where the exact borders were 1-4 visually small galaxies with NGC designations only.

The only constellations dropped with any antiquity were Antinous and Caput Medusae. Antnous designation was ordered by the Roman emporer Hadrian to commorate a friend who was drowned. Caput Medusae, the severed gorgon head of Medusa carried by Perseus, was widely regarded as part of the Perseus constellation despite it's separate designation by Hipparchos, who drew up an early star atlas in the 2nd century BCE.