Camelopardalids? Where is our rain of meteors? Observers report …

View larger. | Observer Nikolaos Patazis wrote, “Probably a Camelopardalid prelude, shot on May 22, 2014, at 19.30 UT, near Athens, Greece.”

At this writing (11 UTC, or 6 a.m. CDT on May 24), it appears that no one is reporting a strong meteor shower from last night’s Camelopardalid shower. A few people saw a few meteors. Spaceweather.com said that:

Meteor rates in many places were no more than 5 or 10 per hour.
… Another possibility is that the shower is not a dud, just delayed. If models mis-located the debris zone, an outburst could still occur later on May 24th.

Overall, a disappointment to many.
RoseMarie Behr at meteorobs.org reported:

Weather reports for our area 20 miles north of Kingston, Ontario didn’t look promising, but I set my alarm for 2:00 a.m. to check. Hit the snooze button, then dragged my groggy self out of bed. Clear sky!
Bundled up with warm clothes and big klunkety boots that would keep my feet warm and dry in the rain soaked grass, collected camera and tripod and headed out to where I had a view of Camelodorkus just over the trees. Set up and waited. Held my breath with anticipation. And waited. Fiddled with the camera. Whistled to the whipporwill. And waited. Meteor “shower” my ***! Saw one fast little meteor whizz across Ursa Major, watched the ISS and a couple of satellites come over, but meteor “shower”? Nada. Once again my hopes for lovely sparklies was dashed like fine crystal over a rock cliff.
This sleep-depriving bone chilling stiff neck inducing event of major disappointment brought to you by the same sadistic fiends who promised me that Comet Eyesore would be the comet of the century. Pfft! Phooey! Rats!

Read more HERE.

- EarthSky