Hey, Bad Astronomer, Podkayne, or anyone else:
Last night’s meteor storm…I noticed something weird. The meteors would come in “clumps”
Instead of a fairly regular “flow”, what I noticed was that even at the peak, the meteors would fall in groups of four or 5 or 13 and then there’d be a lull for a minute or so and then another batch.
Did whatever comet leave this stuff behind in chunks or are my observational skills off?
Fenris
Often that’s a single piece broken up when it hits the atmosphere. Different materials in the rock will heat and react differently from others, leading to splitting up. If you see something like a handful of pebbles flying in a “bunch”, it’s probably this.
However, if you’re talking about “time” clusters, when there were surges of meteors NOT related spacially, then I don’t have a clue.
Likely just so: Smallish clusters and chunks were left behind in the comet’s path. It’s rather unlikely that the matertial would be evenly distributed, under any circumstances, and I saw at least a dozen meteors that calved, leaving closely spaced trails. One spectacular one left a broad streak across 30+ degrees of the sky, leaving a trail of sparks, and it calved just above the horizon, with both daughters detonating almost immediately. Stunning!
Your observational skills remain intact, for now.
You guys got lucky. I was out in the wood and unfortunately I saw only 1 meteor. What a gip. The plus of this meteor though is that I think it made it to Earth. It seemed really low. I was curiouse if any meteors did land.
Thanks for the answers!