Leonid Meteor Shower

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."

Comments

American-Metric Wars (meteors per hour)

[npongratz]

This year is supposed to be special, with astronomers predicting anywhere from 800 (North America) - 8,000 (Australia) meteors visible per hour...

Oh, so in other words, the conversion rate between American and metric is 10 metric units for each American unit. ;-)

When, Where, and How

[bucklesl]

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.

Planning your observing

[andrel]

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.

Bad publicity and Watching a meteor shower

[jesterzog]

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.