NEWSNOTES New June Meteor Shower?

150 June Botids

1998

Zenithal hourly rate

If you were out skywatching during the final weekend in June,
100
you may have noticed more bright meteors than usual. If so, you
werent alone. Several reports of the unexpected fireballs found their
way to Sky & Telescope, and they may indicate a new meteor shower 50
to add to your observing calendar.
While many amateur astronomers noted the meteors, Japanese ob-
servers made the first official report on a June 27th IAU Circular. There, 0
0h UT 6h 12h 18h 0h UT 6h
Isao Sato (National Astronomical Observatory, Tokyo) passed on a de- June 27 June 28
scription of meteors being seen at a rate of 40 to 50 per hour through
heavy cloud cover on the previous night. Reports from visual observers
suggest that the shower spanned more than 12 hours. Peter Brown and
Wayne K. Hocking (University of Western Ontario) then reported that
they had confirmed the shower by mapping the meteors with radar.
Their July 4th Circular announced that the shower came from a diffuse
radiant at about 15h 12m right ascension, +54 declination (2000.0 coor-
dinates) in the constellation Botes. The meteors they observed peaked
at about 10:20 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on June 27th.
This isnt the first time meteors have been seen streaming from
Botes. Jrgen Rendtel (International Meteor Organization) notes
that similar showers were well observed in 1916, 1927, and possibly
1921. Those events had been linked to Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke, a
body that has had its orbit shifted by the gravitational influence of
Jupiter. The association to the comet has been subsequently bolstered
by analysis of photographs of a Botid reported by Pavel Spurny and
Jiri Borovicka (Ondrejov Observatory, Czech Republic). Simultaneous
images from two widely separated sites allowed the astronomers to
determine by triangulation the meteoroids path through the atmos-
phere. They found that its trajectory was consistent with the comets
orbit. Other details in Spurny and Borovickas July 21st Circular in- Top: Meteor rates of the 1998 June Botids
clude that the meteoroid hit the atmosphere at about 18 kilometers a possible new shower as compiled by Jr-
per second with an initial mass of 140 grams (5 ounces) and burned gen Rendtel and Rainer Arlt of the Interna-
up at an altitude of 72 km. tional Meteor Organization from visual and
It is not known whether a similar Botid display will reward ob- radar observations. Above: A fisheye camera
servers in 1999, but it cant hurt to look even though the Moon at Ondrejov Observatory captured this
will be nearly full when the shower is predicted to recur. Botid meteor on the night of June 27th.
Courtesy Pavel Spurny.

Directly Detecting Dust

Astronomers have extended the art of taking celestial photographs
from familiar visible light to radio waves, gamma rays, and nearly
everything in between. But it has remained a challenge to obtain
high-resolution images in certain parts of the electromagnetic spec-
trum. One underexplored spectral swath comprises photons with
submillimeter wavelengths. Submillimeter telescopes are optimal
for measuring the glow of frigid dust clouds, whether they bisect
spiral galaxies like NGC 891, shown here, or girdle nearby stars (Au-
gust issue, page 26). The 15-meter-wide James Clerk Maxwell
Telescope stares at space from Mauna Kea, Hawaii, where its 4,092-
meter altitude minimizes atmospheric absorption. Its new SCUBA
camera (see page 16) created this detailed image (left panel) of NGC
891s interstellar dust, which glows at tepid temperatures only tens
of degrees above absolute zero. As a comparison with a visible -
light plate (right panel) suggests, the dust is warmed to those
temperatures by light from the spiral galaxys stars. North is up
with east to the left in these 5-arcminute -wide views. Courtesy
Paul van der Werf (Leiden Observatory) and AURA, respectively.

22 October 1998 Sky & Telescope 1998 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.