Introduction:
On the night between April 6. and April 7, I made visual observations from my home place Brokerudshagen in Norway. This was my first visual observation since January, due to a lot of snow and bad weather. I was therefore eager to see what the night would bring, when i walked out the door at 22:00 UT. The sky was clear and transparent, and I looked forward to see if I could spot any activity from the Zeta Cygnids, a minor shower listed with a maximum on April 6 in Robert Lunsford’s “Meteor Activity Outlook for 6-12 April 2019″. During 3 hours of observation I saw 21 Sporadic meteors, 2 Zeta Cygnids, and 1 Antihelion meteor. 6 meteors were also captured with my Nikon D3100 camera with a Samyang 16mm, F 2.0 lens. Details of the observation is presented below.
22:30 – 23:30 UT
Teff: 1.00, F: 1.00, Lm: 6.11, RA: 255, Dec: +65
Spo: 1(1), 2(2), 3(1), 5(1), 6(1) – A total of 6 meteors.
Ant: 3(1) – A total of 1 meteor.
Zcy: 0 meteors.
The observing session started out with a faint 6-mag sporadic meteor in Draco, followed up by a 5-mag in Ursa Minor 9 minutes later. At 22:50 UT the first bright meteor appeared in Draco, a second magnitude, slow moving, white sporadic meteor right in the middle of my camera field. 4 minutes later a 3-mag, reddish, medium- to slow moving Antihelion meteor was also captured by camera in the constellation of Corona Borealis. The next half hour produced another 2-mag and 3-mag sporadic, bringing the total number of meteors the first hour to seven.
23:30 – 00:35 UT
Teff: 1,03, F: 1.00, Lm: 6.19, RA: 255, Dec: +65
Spo: 2(2), 3(2), 4(3), 5(1) – A total of 8 meteors.
Ant: 0 meteors
Zcy: 4(1) – A total of 1 meteor.
The next hour started good, with 3 sporadic meteors of mag 2, 4, and 5, the first fifteen minutes. Then a dull period of almost 20 minutes, before a nice 2-mag sporadic streaked the sky near Albireo in Cygnus. At first, I thought I may have seen my first Zeta Cygnid, but being in the outskirts of my field of view, I was a bit uncertain with the radiant line-up, and chose to note it as a sporadic. Checking the camera the next day, that proved to be a right decision. After yet 3 more sporadic meteors, my first real candidate to be a Zeta Cygnid, came 00:28 UT. This 4-mag meteor in Draco lined perfectly up with the radiant, and both velocity and length seemed just right in the distance it appeared from the radiant! After another sporadic meteor, the hour ended with a total of 8 sporadics and 1 Zeta Cygnid.
00:35 – 01:40 UT
Teff: 1.03, F: 1.00, Lm: 6.19, RA: 270, Dec: +55
Spo: 0(1), 1(1), 3(3), 4(2) – A total of 7 meteors.
Ant: 0 meteors.
Zcy: 5(1) – A total of 1 meteor.
The last hour started with a beautiful, reddish, and very slow-moving meteor in Virgo. Then two more sporadics of mag 3 and 4, before my next likely Zeta Cygnid candidate appeared at 01:08 UT. This 5-mag meteor was very similar to the first Zeta Cygnid, right in the center of my field of view, and just the right velocity and length to be regarded as such. Three minutes later a nice 1-mag sporadic seemed to flash out from the star Deneb towards the horizon. This one made a nice photo, being reddish in color, and with a visible flash at the end of the flight. Three more sporadic meteors were seen the next half hour, one of them being a possible April Lambda Ophiuchid (ALO), but noted in the observation as a sporadic. Observation ended 01:40, after a successful 3-hour session under a clear and transparent April sky.