Tau Herculid Meteor Shower

The 2022 Tau Herculid meteor shower was a bit of a surprise with the possibility of a strong shower, with perhaps a "storm" intensity of hundreds of meteors per hour. The intensified shower was predicted due to the breakup of Comet 73P / Schwassmann-Wachmann 3. The peak activity was predicted for about 10PM PDT, with the radiant nearly directly overhead for those of us southern California.

The result was not a complete bust, but not a storm either. It was more like a strong version of a normal meteor shower, with visible meteors every couple of minutes. Most of the meteors were of "medium" brightness and "medium" speed. The visible paths were shorter than I've seen in other meteor showers, but it may be that the radiant was high in the sky.

Composite of meteors (21:18-00:56 PDT). Camera: Nikon D850 at ISO 3200 with Sigma 12-24 zoom at 12mm @ f/4.5, 10 second exposures. Click on the image to see an enlarged version.

These composites were assembled by using one of the frames as a reference and aligning other frames with meteors to the reference using Registar and then combining the frames in Photoshop.

Composite of meteors (21:18-22:56 PDT). Camera: Nikon D600 at ISO 1600 with Tamron 28-70mm zoom at 28mm @ f/2.8, 20 second exposures. Click on the image to see an enlarged version.

Composite of meteors (23:09-00:22 PDT). Camera: Nikon D600 at ISO 1600 with Tamron 28-70mm zoom at 28mm @ f/2.8, 20 second exposures. Click on the image to see an enlarged version.

The shots above were taken with cameras on stationary tripods. The shots below were taken with a camera on a tracking mount (Losmandy G11) due to the use of a longer focal length lens (105mm).

Composite of meteors in Scorpius. Camera: Hutech modified Canon RP at ISO 1600 with Nikon 105mm @ f/2.8, 20 second exposures. The lower meteor is from another small meteor shower in Ophiuchus. Click on the image to see an enlarged version.

Composite of meteors in Cygnus. Camera: Hutech modified Canon RP at ISO 1600 with Nikon 105mm @ f/2.8, 20 second exposures. Some meteors were from minor meteor showers in Ophiuchus. Click on the image to see an enlarged version.