Radiant Plots

An important task for video observers is the accurate determination of shower radiant positions. The plot above was generated with the program Radiant by Rainer Arlt. It shows the position of the Quadrantid radiant derived from 39 shower meteors. They were recorded by our video system MOVIE during an observation session near Hannover (Germany) on January 3/4, 1995. It is obvious that there is no deviation from radiant position found in the literature (green circle).

However, this is not always the case. On November 22/23, 1995, we were able to witness and record an extreme rare outburst of the Alpha-Monocerotids. This unique event lasted only about 20 minutes, so it was impossible to change the systems field of view. Even though the resulting radiant plot is far from beeing optimal due to this fact, it gives us for the first time an accurate radiant position for this shower. Obviously the few visual observations made so far resulted in an errorneous position by several degrees.