Projects / meetings



Meteor Section Autumn Meeting 2010

Meteor Section Autumn Meeting was held 15.10.2010 - 17.10.2010 at Artjärvi Observatory.



Meteor Section attended Cygnus 2010 summer camp

Meteor Section meeting was held at Cygnus 2010 summer camp in Ilmajoki saturday 17.7.2010 at 16-16.30.



Meteor Section Lecture in Mikkeli 17 April 2010

Meteor Section will give lecture of meteor stream Gamma Ursae Minorids in Mikkeli "Star Days 2010" 17 April 2010.



Meteor Section Autumn Meeting 2009

Meteor Section Autumn Meeting will be held 16.10.2009 - 18.10.2009 at Artjärvi Observatory.



Meteor Section attended Cygnus 2009 summer camp

Meteor Section attended Cygnus 2009 summer camp in Utsjoki.

Section told about meteorites from 2008 TC3 meteoroid.



Meteor Section Autumn Meeting 2008

Meteor Section Autumn Meeting will be held 17.10.2008 - 19.10.2008 at Artjärvi Observatory.



Meteor Section attended Cygnus 2008 summer camp

Meteor Section attended Cygnus 2008 summer camp in Varkaus.

Section meeting was friday 18 July 2008.



Meteor Section Autumn Meeting 2007

Meteor Section Autumn Meeting was held 6.10.2007 - 7.10.2007 at Artjärvi Observatory.



Meteor Section attended Cygnus 2007 summer camp

Meteor Section attended Cygnus 2007 summer camp.

Section meeting was held friday 27 July 2007.



Meteor Section Autumn Meeting 2006

Meteor Section Autumn Meeting was held 7.10.2006 - 8.10.2006 at Artjärvi Observatory.

Picture of participants at small resolution (256 k)


Meteor Section attended Cygnus 2006 summer camp

Meteor Section attended Cygnus 2006 summer camp.

Section meeting and public lecture was held saturday 5th August 2006.

In section meeting we discussed about observations and plans. New observation guide was presented and discussed. We talked about video meteor observation network and discussed about WGN-article (WGN 34:2 April 2006): "Multiple station meteor observations: an international program for studying minor showers exploring IMO potentiality" by Josep M. Trigo-Rodriguez, Jeremie Vaubaillon, Esko Lyytinen and Markku Nissinen. We discussed about web-fireball forms also. New Meteor Section Autumn meeting time was decided in the Section Meeting, new time is 7 Oct - 8 Oct 2006. Autumn Meeting will be held at Artjärvi Observatory. Also satellites and rocket-phenomena section will keep the meeting in the same time, so the meeting will be common between two sections. We decided that new observing guide will be presented in the Autumn Meeting if it is ready then.

Public lecture: "Video observations of minor streams". Lecture was kept by Markku Nissinen and Marko Toivonen.

More information of summer camp is found at Cygnus 2006 homepage:

Cygnus 2006


Meteor Section Autumn Meeting 2005

Meteor Section's Autumn Meeting was held at Artjärvi Observatory 8.- 9.Oct.2005.

Picture of participants at small resolution (176 k)

Picture of participants at higher resolution (980 k)


Meteor Section's program in Cygnus 2005 summer camp

Annual summer camp Cygnus was held year 2005 in Lapua. Meteor Section's meeting was at friday 22.7.2005 at 14.00 - 14.45. Right after the meeting 14.45 - 15.30 there was presentation of Meteor Year 2005 highlights and observations and predictions for meteor streams of year 2005.

Cygnus 2005


Leonids 2004

Leonid predictions for year 2004


Meteor Section Autumn Meeting 2004

Meteor Section's Autumn Meeting was held at Artjärvi Observatory 9.- 10.Oct.2004. Many thanks for the participants of the Meeting.


Leonids 2003

Leonid predictions for year 2003


Meteor Section Autumn Meeting 2003

Meteor Section's Autumn Meeting was held at Verla 18.10.- 19.10.2003. Many thanks for people who participated the meeting.


Ursids 2002

We submitted following information to meteorobs, IMO-news and Ursa Meteor Section mailinglists:

We have searched for possible encounters, this December, with old Ursids trails left from the parent comet 8P/Tuttle.

The most promising trail appears to be the very old trail from the year 1090.

This trails is of course very strongly disrupted. According to the modelling, meteoroids from this trails seem to have some clustering near the Earth orbit at the correct time this December. Possible encounter can be at two completely different sections of the trail, these making further 'foldings'. Especially the one with larger da0, seems to consist of a wide range of da0:s (could be divided further to at least three sections).

Using the solar radiation pressure to cause the da0 in the modelling, the encountering sections correspond the beta values of about 0.00041 or 0.00042 and 0.00059 to 0.00070 The smaller beta value has the most close encounter in the nominal solution A2=0, but this situation is preserved only with quite a small range of the A2-values near zero. At the higher beta values, it is the "A2-effect", (negative values) that seems to bring the particles more close to the Earth orbit.

The encounter with the smaller da0 is predicted at solar longitude 270.71 or 270.72 and the other at solar longitude 270.76 to 270.82. The former is expected to contain brighter meteors. The peaks are expected to merge into each other with a more or less gradual dimming of the meteors.

We can't give any ZHR value and not even tell which one of the trail sections will give the higher ZHR. The parent comet early motion uncertainties grow quickly when we compare for example the returns around 1100 to those near 1400. We can not be even certain of any apparent trail encounter, but do expect that the encounters are strong enough to be detected and give ZHR above the background. In 2000 the beta value was about 0.0011, so the meteors are now expected to be generally brighter. Because of the full moon this is an important factor.

The times are: 2002,12,22.79 or about 19:00UT, for the first section encounter 2002,12,22.86 or about 20:40UT, for the second section encounter

9 December 2002

Esko Lyytinen
Markku Nissinen

Ursids 2002 News from Finnish Meteor Section page.


Leonid project 2002

Leonid 2002 News from Finnish Meteor Section page.


Meteor Section Autumn Meeting 28.9.2002 - 29.9.2002

Meteor Section's Autumn Meeting was held on Verla near Kuusankoski on 28.9 - 29.9.2002. Many thanks to people, who participated the meeting!


Leonid project 2001

Leonid predictions 2001 (Lyytinen's Team).


Meteor Section participated to "Avaruus 2001" exhibition

Meteor Section was telling about its activities in Ursa Astronomical Association's exhibition section in "Avaruus 2001" exhibition, which was held in Helsinki on 3.11.2001. Thanks to everyone, who attended!


Meteor Section Autumn Meeting 22.9 / 23.9.2001

Meteor Section's Autumn meeting was held on 22.9.2001 (saturday) - 23.9.2001 (sunday) on Verla (30 km north of Kuusankoski). Meeting started at 14:00 on saturday and ended on 12:00 on sunday. Many thanks for people who participated to the meeting.


Meteor Section's Meeting in Cygnus 2001 summer camp

This year Cygnus 2001 summer camp was held in Räyskälä. Meteor Section had section meeting in 3rd August 2001 at 15:30 - 16:15. We discussed about last observing seasons results and planned activities for next observing season. We talked about leonid predictions for this year and trained observers to make plotting observations of meteors (plotting observations project during Cygnus camp).


Leonid project 2000

Many Finnish observers observed here in Finland and Mr. Janne Pyykkö observed in Florida. The weather was reasonable good here this year. We updated our mailing list meteorit-l@ursa.fi with latest information and transferred weather observations between observers to get more observers to good observing places. Esko Lyytinen and Ilkka Yrjölä made radio-observations. Observers who sent reports to Meteor Section during the Leonids 2000: Ilkka Yrjölä, Esko Lyytinen, Janne Pyykkö, Veikko Mäkelä, Kukka Viitala, Jani Katava, Timo Leponiemi, Markku Nissinen, Marko Toivonen, Jorma Koski and Jarmo Moilanen.


Meteor Section's Meeting in Kuvansi 2000 in October

Section Meeting took place in the beginning of october in Kuvansi 6.10 - 8.10.2000.


Meteor Section's Program in Cygnus 2000 summer camp in Porvoo

This year Meteor Section's program in Cygnus was more interesting than ever before. We organized with aurora section radio workshop in which we observed simultaneously aurora and meteor activities with two radios. People who organized the workshop are Jani Katava, Ilkka Yrjölä and Markku Nissinen. We had meteor scientist Esko Lyytinen telling us about leonid and other meteor streams prediction methods. His presentation was very well done, many thanks to him. We had also traditional section meeting in saturday.


Meteor Section's Leonid project '99

Timo Leponiemi ja Janne Pyykkö are going to Tunis (arrival 12.11. and departure 19.11.), probably also Timo Kinnunen will participate (14.11.-21.11.). Some other observers are also participating. Additional information from home page of Timo Leponiemi.
Section leaders observed this year from Finland according to our plans. Latest information is available from meteor section. In Finland our goal was to get good visual observation data and also good radio data and possibly video observations also (Ilkka Yrjölä's video system). Photographic observations were of course also planned. That is what happened: Night before maximum was good, in fact excellent, but only few leonids were observed visually (of course because peak was to be sharp). Maximum noght was cloudy with snowing, only few meteors were seen through clouds, maximum was detected in some areas where cloud cover was thinnest. So the maximum occured all right, there is probably enough data in other media so I am not going into details about ZHR observed visuallyl or other details. So, lucky you who were under clear skies on 17/18 !!!


Meteor section meeting in Cygnus '99

Meteor section had the meeting also in this year Cygnus. In addition to traditional meeting we had also workshop program. In meeting we discussed about last years leonid project and this year plans. New limiting magnitude determination areas from IMO were introduced in the meeting. In workshop we analysed video observations and radio observations from Mr. Ilkka Yrjölä and discussed about observation methods.


Leonid project in november 1998

We made the observing trip to China to good observing location in november. We left Helsinki 12.11 to Peking and came back 20.11. We observed in the great wall about 120 km northeast of Peking. Weather was good, Lm was about 6.0. We made over 7 hours of visual meteor observations in the maximum night (17/18.11). Unfortunately supermaximum did not materialize, activity was around ZHR 150. Observations to meteor section from leonids sent: Teemu Öhman, Timo Kinnunen, Ilkka Yrjölä, Vesa Törnqvist and Markku Siljama. Janne Pyykkö observed leonids in Thailand. Veikko Mäkelä collected weather data during leonids (see Ursa Minor 6/98). Many thanks to all!


Sauna party 1998

The traditional Sauna party took place also in last year. It was held in 8/9.10, the draconid maximum night. We gathered in Kuvansi, Ilkka Yrjölä, Marko Toivonen, Jani Katava and Markku Nissinen. Ilkka had his video camera system with him. Sky was partly cloudy, but we were to observe all right. The maximum occured 8/9.10 at 13:00 GMT and ZHR was well over 100. Unfortunately it was daytime in Finland. In the night draconid activity was a little over normal level, but not anymore near outburst levels.


Meteor section meeting in Cygnus '98

Meteor section had the meeting in last year Cygnus. We discussed about last and this year (1999) leonid otburst possibilities and possible draconid outburst last year among other things. Ilkka Yrjölä presented recording device, which records timesignal to cassette. He has developed that himself. He also showed us his video camera system, which was magnificient. Meeting gathered a lot of people.



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