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Leonid Meteor Shower

Posted by Hemos on from the very-nice dept.

Tristan Bennett writes "It looks as though those in Australia and America are in for a real treat. During the week before and after November 18, the Earth will pass through the trail of comet Tempel-Tuttle and be pelted with hail of sand-sized material. This year is supposed to be special, with astronomers predicting anywhere from 800 (North America) - 8,000 (Australia) meteors visible per hour at the storm's peak -- on November 18th."

14 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. When, Where, and How by bucklesl · · Score: 5, Informative
    How about some basic info on where to watch, eh?

    Gleened from Space.com

    For North American skywatchers, Earth will enter the heavier parts of the stream at about 11 p.m. EST on Saturday, Nov. 17. Activity will peak around 5 a.m. Sunday morning, when as many as 13 meteors per minute could be visible, likely for a stretch of time that lasts less than 1 hour. The peak corresponds to 4 a.m. CST, 3 a.m. MST and 2 a.m. PST.

    --
    help fill in hidden movie endings @ End of the Credits
  2. Find the best time to watch... by Hal-9001 · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...using the Leonid Flux Estimator.

    --
    "It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
    1. Re:Find the best time to watch... by Hal-9001 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Apparently the Leonid Flux Estimator has moved. It's now here. You'll need a Java-capable browser to use it.

      --
      "It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
  3. More on Light Pollution by A5WKS24 · · Score: 3, Informative
    8,000 meteors per hour? Good luck. In our modern cities, light pollution is so extreme that we will be lucky to see even a fraction of that number.

    Now would be a good time to revisit the Slashdot story on the Atlas of Worldwide Light Pollution. It really makes you sit up and think about what we are doing to our night skies.

  4. Planning your observing by andrel · · Score: 5, Informative

    You'll want to use XEphem to plan your Leonid observing. It is freely available software for GNU/Linux that produces great printable star charts and much more. If for some reason you can't get XEphem for your OS you might find Heavens Above to be useful.

    1. Re:Planning your observing by redcliffe · · Score: 2, Informative

      Or you can try KStars, for a more modern Ephemeris/star chart program.

      You can download it at http://kstars.sf.net

  5. Bad publicity and Watching a meteor shower by jesterzog · · Score: 5, Informative

    Woohoo! IAAAA (I Am An Amateur Astronomer). =) Anyway, I have two main things to say. The first is a rant about the media blowing things out of proportion, and the second is some tips on how to look for a meteor shower.

    I hope it is really great this year, but please nobody assume that it's going to happen just because it's in a newspaper or on the news.

    Astronomy's one of those cost-benefit things where 99 out of 100 times there's a warning and you get up at 3 in the morning and nothing happens. The other time you see something and it's either average, or spectacular and a life-long memory.

    In 1966, everyone assumed that the Leonids had died, because they hadn't shown up at all in the 30's. A relatively small number of people went out at the time that they were predicted, and they saw a really awesome display.

    The Leonids were again predicted to be really big in 1999, to the point where CNN was showing Japanese people in downtown Tokyo setting up deck chairs on the roof of office blocks. The whole thing fizzled, and immediately afterwards lots of the editorial media started complaining that nothing had happened. The same thing was predicted again for last year, and nothing really happened on the spectacular scale of what was expected.

    This year, someone else has predicted that it'll happen by using a slightly different system. Like I said I hope it's right. I'll definitely be up in the morning watching with friends from my local club, and if nothing happens we'll drag out the telescopes nad look at other stuff in the sky.

    We never bother bringing the media in on possibly "big" events anymore, though, because they just blow the entire general public's expectations out of proportion and then blame astronomers for being wrong when it doesn't come off. If something happens then we all get to see it and tell the media after it's happened - if we're lucky, someone got a good photograph.

    So don't get your hopes up. Anyway, for everyone who does go out and look, here's some pointers:

    • Try to find a group of people - ideally people who are interested in observing of some sort, but otherwise just grab some friends. Astronomical observing is so much more fun when there are other people around to enjoy it.
    • Take some binoculars if you have them - they'll give you something to do if there aren't any meteors straight away, or at all. You can see so much more in the sky with binoculars. Magnification isn't important, but the size of the objective lens is, because the bigger it is the more light it collects and the more you can see.
    • Find somewhere dark. The darker, the better. Get away from civilisation, get away from streetlights. Don't use a torch because a flash of it wrecks anything up to an hour's worth of your eye's dark adaption. If and when you need to use a torch, use a red filtered one, since red light has the least effect on your eyes. (Putting some red cellophane over an ordinary torch usually works okay.) Be careful of interior car lights that come on when you open the door - they're annoying.
    • Take lots of warm clothes, and be prepared to be up all night. Several layers of clothes is good, because the air pockets trap in body heat. Also grab a warm hat, gloves, and generally as much as you can find. You don't have to wear it straight away but have it nearby for when you get cold. (Which often happens when you're outside at night and not moving around much - especially when moving into the winter like the northern hemisphere is.)
    • Take along a thermos and put hot coffee in it, or something similar. You'll want it after a while and having it there is much better than going inside. Also having a deck chair or a rug, or something else to lie back on for looking up is good. It gets a bit difficult straining your neck back all the time.
    • The Leonids are called that because they fly out from about that part of the sky. When the Earth's going through space, it's like the dust splattering on a windscreen, and the central point of that splattering (for this shower) is Leo. You might see them all over the sky, but they can all be traced back to this one point. If you want to know where and when Leo is, you could use a star map program like this one (I don't think there are any decent open source ones available, but please tell me if anyone knows of one), or try a website like this one. Even if Leo's not visible, you might still see meteors - they'll just look like they're coming from below the horizon.

    Have fun. =P And if you're still interested, go and find a local astronomical society. Local ones are usually better than big ones because you get to actually go out and do stuff.

  6. This show is more certain than others in the past by btempleton · · Score: 3, Informative

    Though there are 4 different sets of predictions, the main 3 agree exactly on the times of the peak -- 10 GMT and 18 GMT. I'm off to Japan or places near it. Airfares are super low -- $400 or so round trip to Japan.

    Joe Haldeman saw the storm in 1966. That one was bigger, about 66,000 meteors per hour by estimate. He described it to me as being like in a car driving through the snow or being on the bridge of the enterprise. For the first time, he felt he was on a planet speeding through space. It gave him a real sense of scale.

    That was enough for me to book the asian trip.
    Note that Australia will get half the meteors of Japan, Guam or China, but has the best chance of clear skies and the most English.

    --
    Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
  7. For Photographers by brad-d · · Score: 3, Informative
    For the sake of putting a few links in the same place, here is a collection of articles that talk about what you need to take photos of meteor showers.

    Firstly, photo.net's search engine returns a few results:

    1. The search results

    2. This article is a good pick from the above search.
    A good step-by-step guide can be found here.

    This site is supposed to have a very good article about meteor photography, but I haven't found the link yet. In any case it has a reasonable amount of information on meteors in general and how to best observe them. You'll find this information on this link.

    Of course, if any body else has other links to similar information I'd love to see them. I haven't gone out myself to take these types of shots before, so any help I can get is good.

    Finally, for a bit of inspiration - here is a photo (although not of a meteor shower, just star trails) that is just amazing.

    --
    -Brad
  8. Re:How visible will it be? by suss_dragon · · Score: 3, Informative
    Normally I'd say you won't be seeing much at all but during last year's Leonids I saw plenty while driving on the highway, trying to escape clouded skies. Now, keep in mind that I live in Belgium and that our highways are flooded with lampposts... :)

    The most important thing with meteor observations is a good view at as much of the sky as possible. Thus you need dark skies and as few obstacles (trees, buildings, hills,...) as possible.

    Check the website of the International Meteor Organisation for more info!

    Benny

  9. Us europeens get our treat in December.. by z-man · · Score: 2, Informative

    We will get our treat in December when Geminids (Dec. 12-14) hit us. :)

    http://www.skypub.com/sights/meteors/meteors.shtml

  10. Finding a dark place to view the sky by jvptoad · · Score: 2, Informative

    The International Dark-Sky Association has a cool Dark Sky Finder on their website. Sorry Australia, it's just for the U.S.

    You can click on a spot on the map, and it will find the darkest locations within 60 miles. They used census data to estimate the amount of light pollution in a given area based on population, so it might be a good idea to do a sanity check before heading out somewhere in the middle of the night.

    Happy viewing!

  11. As a strange, geeky tie-in... by Lurkingrue · · Score: 2, Informative

    As a peculiar coincidence, Chris Crawford seems to be involved heavily in studying the Leonids.

    Crawford, many of us will remember, is the programming mind behind some of the more intriguing games of the old Atari computer platform (Legionnaire, Eastern Front) as well as some very interesting stuff done on the early Macintosh system (Patton vs Rommel, Balance of Power, Siboot II). Lately, he's been involved in some interactive fiction projects, but has received very mixed reviews from the IF community (see /. recent article on this year's IF competition).

    If anyone is interested in helping out a minor computer-gaming legend with another geek-out, you can see what he's up to this year with the Leonids at:
    http://www.erasmatazz.com/Leonids/Leonids.htm l

  12. If there's one night... by lbastiae · · Score: 3, Informative

    If there's one night in the next few decades to watch for meteors, it's definitely this one. I agree that you can't be 100% sure, but all predication models show high peaks at the same times. Only the expected amounts (ZHR) differs. Predictions for 1999 with less solid models proved to be less than 5 minutes wrong in time. I wouldn't call that inaccurate... Some suggestions: - Peaks are quite sharp. Only a couple of hours around the peak get very high activity. - Three expected peaks: one perfect for America (11/18 10h01 UT), two others best in eastern Asia (11/18 17h31 UT and 18h19 UT). - Observations before midnight local time don't make too much sense since you're on the wrong side of the earth. - Of course usual astronomical hint: dark area... Anyway, I'll be travelling from Belgium to China for the event...