{"id":25643,"date":"2025-07-20T19:12:24","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T18:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.petrhoralek.com\/?p=25643"},"modified":"2026-02-02T18:50:59","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T17:50:59","slug":"twelve-years-of-kappa-cygnids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petrhoralek.com\/?p=25643","title":{"rendered":"Thirteen years of Kappa Cygnids"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Thirteen<\/a>

Thirteen years of Kappa Cygnids<\/p><\/div>\n

Every year in mid-August, almost at the same time like the Perseids, another meteor shower peaks: the \u03ba-Cygnid<\/a>. Named after the star Kappa (\u03ba) in the Swan constellation<\/a>, from where the slow meteors seemingly appear, they are almost not known as–unlike the Perseids–they have a very low rate of meteors, only about 3 per hour when the shower peaks. Since I have chased \u03ba-Cygnids from 2012, for more than 443 hours of 59 nights, to be exact, I was successful in capturing dozens of them. It allowed me to reveal it as a meteor shower against the 11 August 2021 nightscape scenery of Elafonisi Beach, Crete, Greece<\/a>. I think nobody captured \u03ba-Cygnids this way before (correct me if I am wrong), cause it required very long-term shooting. Filtered from other meteors, planes, and satellites, this blended timelapse image shows that the 12 years of capturing is long enough to let the \u03ba-Cygnid pop out from the “shadow of fame” of much more active Perseids<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The \u03ba-Cygnids have an unknown source, but most likely they are caused by debris of minor planet 2008 ED69. They also have a 7-year cycle of higher activity caused by the influence of gravity from the giant planet Jupiter. Last time such higher activity occured in 2021<\/a>, when also most of the meteors in the image were captured. Kappa-Cygnids are also one of three showers of \u201csummer north toroidal complex\u201d caused most likely by the same source (seriously suggested is asteroid 2008 ED69). That made me feel they really need to be brought out of the \u201cshadow\u201d of the famous August meteor shower.<\/p>\n

Co authors of the data are Josef Kujal and Tom\u00e1\u0161 Slovinsk\u00fd.<\/p>\n

Nights of shooting<\/strong><\/p>\n

The following statistics show the information about the observation night, along with the equipment used and the number of captured Kappa-Cygnids. The highest rate was recorded in 2021. There are two reasons: 1) Higher activity of the shower, 2) Most complex photographic coverage of the sky (4 cameras), and most of the clear skies.<\/p>\n