Alpha Aurigid Meteor Shower
From 5 to 5:30 am MDT, I saw 9 meteors from here in Louisville looking to the
east toward the constellation Auriga and Gemini. All but one appeared to be from a radiant slightly south of the center of Auriga.
Five of the Alpha Aurigid meteors were quite bright (magnitude -2) , the rest about
magnitude 1 or 2. All meteors were very fast; 3 left trains that persisted for
about 2 sec. I didn’t note much color, all were white or bluish-white. A few
thin clouds in my fov, but overall conditions quite good. Limiting visual
magnitude was about 5 with moonlight, the brightening dawn, and light pollution.
Chris over at Cloudbait Observatory got some cool images with an all sky cam.
Read the NASA article about this rare, unusual display at http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/EOS.pdf.
For more information about meteors see the American Meteor Society website.