Possible new minor shower in early February?

This is a part of the message sent to meteorobs mailing list on January 7 2000 by G.W. Gliba: 
    * * * * MINOR METEOR SHOWER ALERT - Possible Xi Bootid Meteors * * * *

    On Sunday morning, February 6th, or sooner, there may be a repeat showing
of the possible Xi Bootid minor meteor shower, which was first seen in 1997 
from the Florida Keys, during the annual Winter Star Party. I saw 14 meteors 
in about 2.5 hours Teff from a radiant near Xi Bootis. I estimated the general
location of the putative radiant as best I could as I wasn't plotting. If I 
hadn't see seven meteors from the same area during the first hour, from 7:23 
to 8:23 UT, it would have been hard to estimate a radiant without plotting, 
but seeing so many meteors in an hour alerted me to enhanced activity coming
from the constellation Bootes.

    Once fixed on a radiant near Xi Bootis, I was strict when assigning any
association to it. As I knew that personal bias can play bad tricks, I put a
limit of five degrees on the size of the radiant. This is smaller than what
the IMO uses for meteor shower associations when plotting. After a total of 
about 7.5 hours of meteor observing, from Feb. 5/6 to Feb. 8/9 1997, at early
morning hours, I determined that 26 meteors of medium speed, with an average
magnitude of 3.6, were seen coming from a possible new unknown radiant near 
the star Xi in Bootes.

    With the very favorable lunar and calendar conditions this year (New Moon
and the Weekend), this year would be a good time to try to plot meteors from 
this part of the sky to try to confirm any possible minor shower activity.
Video, radio, radar, and photographic observations are also encouraged.

Three members of MBK Team (Jure Atanackov, Javor Kac and Jure Zakrajsek) observed for 50 hours Teff from February 4 to February 13 2000.

IMO Code Date Teff LM Total Plotted Spor VIR XBO?
ATAJU 4/5.2. 4.75 6.38 48 5 45 3 0
KACJA 5/6.2. 2.87 6.77 30 22 28 2 3
ZAKJU 5/6.2. 2.99 6.42 24 18 23 1 2
ATAJU 5/6.2. 5.86 6.34 67 34 66 1 3+6
ATAJU 6/7.2. 2.02 6.42 15 9 15 0 0
ZAKJU 7/8.2. 2.20 6.74 23 17 23 0 2
ATAJU 7/8.2. 2.37 6.60 34 32 33 1 5
KACJA 10/11.2. 6.39 6.77 52 42 49 3 2
ATAJU 10/11.2. 9.46 6.90 123 108 116 7 7
ZAKJU 10/11.2. 9.51 6.82 84 54 81 3 4
ATAJU 13/14.2. 2.19 6.40 41 30 41 0 1
50.61 541 371 520 21 35
Teff ... effective observing time (hours),
LM ... average limiting magnitude during observation,
Total ... total number of meteors observed,
Plotted ... total number of meteors plotted,
Spor ... number of sporadis meteors,
VIR ... number of Virginids,
XBO? ... number of possible Xi Bootids.

As all of the available 335 plots are entered, we get an active area at 226 +27 (for l¤= 320°):

Plot shows only data from February 8 to 13, no active areas around Bootes could be detected from February 4 to 7, probably due to a shorter Teff with the radiant at a favourable altitude.

Other pages of interest:

  • Meteors from Bootes early February? (Jürgen Rendtel)
  • A history and summary of the Xi Bootids (George Gliba)
  • A nice show from the Xi Bootids (Gregg M. Pasterick)
  • Astronomical Society Orion
    Last update: February 25 2000
    Javor Kac