Radiant

Counting meteors by eye from a folding chair, one hour at a time, and writing down the number whether or not it was worth it.

Shower calendar

Orionids
Peak 21 Oct · radiant in Orion
20ZHR
Parent body 1P/Halley — fast, faint, and prone to leaving trains
Draconids
Peak 8 Oct · radiant in Draco
varZHR
Parent body 21P/Giacobini-Zinner — unpredictable, occasionally spectacular, usually nothing
Leonids
Peak 17 Nov · radiant in Leo
15ZHR
Parent body 55P/Tempel-Tuttle — the fastest of the year at 71 km/s
Geminids
Peak 14 Dec · radiant in Gemini
150ZHR
Parent body 3200 Phaethon — an asteroid, not a comet, which makes this shower odd and reliable in equal measure
Quadrantids
Peak 3 Jan · radiant in Boötes
110ZHR
Parent body 2003 EH1 — a six hour peak, so the date has to line up with the weather
Perseids
Peak 12 Aug · radiant in Perseus
100ZHR
Parent body 109P/Swift-Tuttle — warm nights, which counts for more than the rate does

Recorded hours

12 Aug 02:0063
12 Aug 03:0072
12 Aug 04:0043
13 Aug 02:3029
8 Oct 21:003
8 Oct 22:002

Raw counts, not corrected to ZHR. The two Draconid hours are exactly what that shower usually delivers, and the only reason to sit through them is the years when it does not.

How a count is made

  1. Sit facing about 40° away from the radiant and 50° up. Looking straight at the radiant is the single most common mistake — meteors there are foreshortened to points.
  2. Record the limiting magnitude at the start and end of every hour. Without it the count means nothing and cannot be compared to anyone else's.
  3. Count in clean hour blocks. A broken hour gets noted as a broken hour rather than scaled up to look like a whole one.
  4. Log sporadics separately from shower members. Tracing the path back to the radiant is a judgement call and gets marked as one when it is close.
  5. Write the number down before checking what anyone else saw.