Abstract: A summary of the activity of the CAMS BeNeLux-network during the month of February 2023 is presented. This month was good for a total of 12552 multi-station meteors resulting in 3543 orbits. Like previous year, most of them were collected in the last part of this month.

 

Introduction

Meteor activity in February is almost at the lowest level of the year for northern latitudes. Nevertheless, because of the long nights, results during this month can still be very good during periods with clear nights.

February 2023 statistics

In February the unstable poor weather continued. Mean temperatures were again fairly high, due to the lack of complete clear skies during the night. In 7 nights, we couldn’t collect any single orbit which is a fairly high number of completely cloudy nights. We could collect a larger number of orbits around February 7, February 14 and towards the end of the month. Statistics are compared in Figure 1 and Table 1.

CAMS-BeNeLux collected 12552 multi-station meteors this month, resulting in a total of 3543 orbits, 1096 of them in the last 4 nights, or approximately 30% of the total number of orbits this month. The number of orbits derived from more than two stations was approximately 57%.

On average 96 cameras, nearly 90% of all 107 available cameras, were active during all nights this month. This number is much higher than last year. Several new cameras were added to the network recently. This month, two RMS-cameras from Kirton (Martin Richmond-Hardy) and Clapton (Andy Washington) in the eastern part of England now provide coverage on the most western parts of our network. In Hagnicourt (Pierre-Yves Péchart), France, two extra RMS cameras contribute their results now to our network. The more (south)eastern parts of our network got support from extra RMS cameras in Germany in Ludwigshafen (Eduardo Fernandez del Peloso) and Solingen (Hartmut Leiting). Felix Bettonvil (Utrecht, Netherlands) and Koen Miskotte (Ermelo, Netherlands) reported that their cameras became active again this month.

From all available CAMS data, higher than usual activity was detected for the February Hydrids, like in 2013 and 2018. Between solar longitude 321.9° and 327.2° a total of 29 FHY-meteors were collected. In other years this shower is nearly absent. It now looks like this stream has a 4.7-year periodicity from dust trapped in a 5:2 mean motion resonance with Jupiter (Jenniskens, 2023).

 

Figure 1 – Comparing February 2023 to previous months of February in the CAMS-BeNeLux history. The blue bars represent the number of orbits, the red bars the maximum number of cameras capturing in a single night, the green bars the average number of cameras capturing per night and the yellow bars the minimum number of cameras.

 

Table 1 – Number of orbits and active cameras in the BeNeLux during the month of February in the period 2013–2023.

Year Nights Orbits Stations Max. Cams Min. Cams Mean Cams
2013 9 38 6 5 – 2.3
2014 21 601 12 29 – 20.3
2015 21 777 14 39 – 27.4
2016 24 1075 17 51 13 36.9
2017 16 717 18 53 20 38.6
2018 26 4147 22 91 48 81.7
2019 24 3485 18 74 50 68.8
2020 24 1215 22 84 62 73.1
2021 25 2136 26 91 60 78.6
2022 23 1939 24 78 49 63.7
2023 21 3543 37 105 79 95.9
Total 234 19673

 

Conclusion

The results for February 2023 are second best for this month during 11 years of CAMS-BeNeLux.

 

Acknowledgement

Many thanks to all participants in the CAMS-BeNeLux network for their dedicated efforts. The CAMS-BeNeLux team was operated by the following volunteers during the month of February 2023:

Hans Betlem (Woold, Netherlands, Watec 3071, 3072, 3073, 3074, 3075, 3076, 3077 and 3078), Felix Bettonvil (Utrecht, Netherlands, Watec 376), Jean-Marie Biets (Wilderen, Belgium, Watec 379, 380 and 381), Ludger Boergerding (Holdorf, Germany, RMS 3801), Günther Boerjan (Assenede, Belgium, RMS 3823), Martin Breukers (Hengelo, Netherlands, Watec 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326 and 327, RMS 319, 328 and 329), Seppe Canonaco (Genk, RMS 3818 and 3819), Pierre de Ponthiere (Lesve, Belgium, RMS 3816 and 3826), Bart Dessoy (Zoersel, Belgium, Watec 804, 805 and 806), Tammo Jan Dijkema (Dwingeloo, Netherlands, RMS  3199), Isabelle Ansseau, Jean-Paul Dumoulin, Dominique Guiot and Christian Wanlin (Grapfontaine, Belgium, Watec 814 and 815, RMS 3814 and 3817), Uwe Glässner (Langenfeld, Germany, RMS 3800), Luc Gobin (Mechelen, Belgium, Watec 3890, 3891, 3892 and 3893), Tioga Gulon (Nancy, France, Watec 3900 and 3901), Robert Haas (Alphen aan de Rijn, Netherlands, Watec 3160, 3161, 3162, 3163, 3164, 3165, 3166 and 3167), Robert Haas (Texel, Netherlands, Watec 811), Kees Habraken (Kattendijke, Netherlands, RMS 3780 and 3781), Klaas Jobse (Oostkapelle, Netherlands, Watec 3030, 3031, 3032, 3033, 3034, 3035, 3036 and 3037), Carl Johannink (Gronau, Germany, Watec 3100, 3101, 3102), Reinhard Kühn (Flatzby, Germany, RMS 3802), Hervé Lamy (Dourbes, Belgium, Watec 395, RMS 3825 and 3841), Hervé Lamy (Humain, Belgium, RMS 3821 and 3828), Hervé Lamy (Ukkel, Belgium, Watec 393), Hartmut Leiting (Solingen, Germany, RMS 3806), Koen Miskotte (Ermelo, Netherlands, Watec 3051, 3052 and 3053), Pierre-Yves Péchart (Hagnicourt, France, RMS 3902, 3903, 3904 and 3905), Eduardo Fernandez del Peloso (Ludwigshafen, Germany, RMS 3805), Tim Polfliet (Gent, Belgium, Watec 396, RMS 3820 and 3840), Steve Rau (Oostende, Belgium, RMS 3822), Steve Rau (Zillebeke, Belgium, Watec 3850 and 3852, RMS 3851 and 3853), Martin Richmond-Hardy (Kirton, England, RMS 3701), Paul and Adriana Roggemans (Mechelen, Belgium, RMS 3830 and 3831, Watec 3832, 3833, 3834, 3835, 3836 and 3837), Jim Rowe (Eastbourne, Great Britain, RMS 3829), Philippe Schaack (Roodt-sur-Syre, Luxemburg, RMS 3952), Hans Schremmer (Niederkruechten, Germany, Watec 803), Jan Thoemel (Luxemburg, Luxemburg, Watec 3950), Erwin van Ballegoij (Heesh, Netherlands Watec 3148 and 3149), Andy Washington (Clapton, England, RMS 3702).