First-hand Account Of The Leonid Shower

chongo writes: "The Leonid meteor shower certainly lived up to its hype this year. At Fremont Peak, CA (USA) we saw a peak rate of 2408 meteors/hour. We saw many bright fireballs. During the peak (18 Nov 2001 1015-1130 UTC) there were frequent instances where multiple meteors were visible. Because of this, we suspect the true rate was likely higher than 2500/hr." We've also heard from several folks who were foiled by weather, but it's good that at least some people got the full show. Update: 11/18 17:09 GMT by T : BrianGa writes: "If you missed the show, like I did, you can see some still pictures and animated pictures." He also points to a site with a preliminary graph of the number of meteors visible on November 18th.

Comments

Innnnn-credibe (South Florida)

[JabberWokky]

I'm down in Palm Beach County, and went out on 441 out towards Okeechobee, out past Moroso to a little side spot I knew and have used several times for stargazing (Milkyway very visible). Halfway there, I had to pull over and just watch for a few minutes - I was getting too distracted by the streaks I could see out my window.

All in all, an incredible experience, it was cloudy only to the east (sometimes lit from behind), so there were tons of long streaks visible (at the same time, different colors, different speeds and different entry angles (not straight out from a central point)). I saw no exploding or splitting bolides, but lots of very persistant dust trails - as the sun was about to rise, they all lit up, and the sky was crisscrossed with them. It was very subtle, but really really nice.

--
Evan

Brooklyn, New York

[Mignon]

I dragged my girlfriend out of bed at 4 am and we took a tarp and sleeping bag to Prospect Park, where we had a nice view in a wide-open meadow near one of the highest points in Brooklyn. Pretty much nothing but sky. There were streetlights, but they were pretty far away and weren't a big problem. Incidentally, there were quite a few other people out there.

I've only seen meteors twice before, and they were nothing like this. It was quite a show. We saw quite a few of the big ones that left a "snail-trail" that could be seen even if you missed the initial flash. There were several multiples, too.

South Florida had it's share

[rycamor]

Went out into the Everglades at 3:00 AM, to meet my photo-geek buddies who had cameras mounted on star tracking systems, etc...

They had a strict no-light policy while running exposures, so you would hear "OK, apertures open", and "apertures closed". (lol)

At first I was disappointed, because it didn't seem any better than last year, but then we started getting bursts of activity, I think at one time I saw as many as 4 or 5 trails in the sky at once, and that was just looking at one quadrant.

The coolest thing was seeing trails that didn't disappear for up to a minute or two, until they started losing shape, drifting in the wind. (wind was almost nil, which was great for photography)

We found it didn't matter which way we pointed cameras, because any direction you looked, you were bound to see one in a few seconds.

I believe I saw at least one meteorite that burst into multiple pieces, before winking out.

We kept on seeing this level of activity until the sun started to rise. From listening to my friends, and my own sightings, it seemed one of us saw something every 2 or 3 seconds, on average.

Even though I have never seen this kind of volume before, they were all small. Didn't see one that fell all the way to earth. (Back in '91 in Canada, I saw one that broke up in several pieces and fell all the way down behind an island)