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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.
Here in the Seattle are we got up to around 1/min then the 10:00-11:00 UTC time frame. Some estimates predicted a later, larger peak around 13:00 UTC but it was cold, and we were very tired. (We were up then because most of the predictions I found on the web showed the peak then for this area. The universe in it's typical perversity seems to have chosen the lone outlier as the correct prediction.)
Most of those we did see were near the zenith and left fairly long (10 degrees), spectacular trails. Based on what I've read elsewhere this was probably the leading edge of the storm. Even missing the peak, it was beautiful and worth the cold and the wait.
I got up at 4am to watch the meteor storm but it was still extremely foggy. The entire evening there was only about a one foot visibility on the road :(
I watched the sky this morning from my backyard in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, where I suppose there is moderate light pollution. Fortunately the sky was perfectly clear. In my first outing, between 7:15-7:45 UTC, I observed a total of 10 meteors in that half hour. I later returned for what was supposed to be peak time around here and watched for 50 minutes from 10:00-10:50 UTC. During that time, I observed 220 meteors. There were quite a few very bright fireballs, and at several times I observed two or three meteors flying across the sky at the same time.
Impressive
Oftentimes multiple tracks visible at once. Very "bursty" activity with gaps of 5 - 30 seconds between sightings, then often several together or in the same part of the sky separated by moments. About one really bright one a minute.
Paths were often at angles to the horizon, once or twice almost oblique. The paths themselves were also often quite prominant being very bright themselves and lasting up to a few degrees behind the meteorite and lingering for a second or two in some cases.
The most astonishing thing was if one laid back as so that the zenith was centered and nothing but sky was in the field of vision there was an almost constant sparkle of *something*. I've done and taught astronomy before but I've never sen this much activity at once - even from this relatively crappy location it was obvious something dramatic was going on overhead.
I'll not attempt to offer counts or speculate on the rate as I was in a lousy location, they're hard estimates to make accurately and frankly I didn't care. It was a deeply impressive sight and I'm thrilled to have witnessed it. In a single hour of viewing I likely saw as many meteorites as I've seen in my life before, never so many multiples at once.
At one point it was like popcorn popping: "Look there... Oh!.. Oh!.. Down!.. Over!.. Uhhhhhhh THERE!"
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I opened up our observatory at CU for my lab section (and any others who came by). I was worried that they'd be disappointed after the hype, but everyone who came seem truly glad to have gotten/stayed up for the event. Either I have a particularly good group this term (which is at least partially true) or it was a pretty impressive even.
I can't begin to estimate the peak rate, as I was jumping between staring at the sky and moving telescopes to various planets and nebulae. But when I had time to look east at Leo, I could see at least one meteor ever few seconds (which correspords to at least 1000/hour). Oddly, while the number of meteors/per time was highest to the east, near the radiant, the quality of the meteors was best looking near zeinth or even westward. Many of the meteors in that section of the sky were brighter, bigger and left trails that persisted for tens of seconds. That, and the mountains made a splendid background.
I had one vistor claim to have seen color in a particularly bright meteor, but I was looking in the opposite direction at the time. Which brings up the old lightening-spotting effect: whenever someone says, "Oooh, pretty one!" everyone else looks in that direction, despite it being too late. There is some sort of poor conditioning going on there, but I'll leave that to psychologists.
In any event, if you didn't see these you either were unlucky or you should have gotten up for this. Either way, be ready for next time!
I was up at 4:30 (AST); nothing much happened. At 5:00, the show started; between 5 and 5:15, the sky was nearly cloudless and the display was quite impressive - a meteor every five seconds or so, with multiple meteors several times (once, a short & quick one shot out below the radient; as it did so, a similar one shot out above the radient. Very keen.). Quite a few fireballs, as well (at least three observed). Clouds began obstructing the view at around 5:15, and by 5:30, only patches of the sky were visible, though every once in a while you could see a meteor from behind the cloud cover, which in some ways was more interesting than the meteors themselves. All in all, a great show: some of the fireballs were amazing, and the consistency after 5am was great.
I saw a few with color-- at least one was bright green and there were a few that were green-yellow and some that appeared to be redish. I don't know how much of this was an afterglow artifact and how much of it was real, but it looked stunning. :)
:)
My vantage point was Kerr Lake, NC. I went camping with some friends and we took a home-made dobsonian telescope to stargaze with prior to the shower. The conditions were about perfect. The sky was clear, there was very little light pollution, it was dry, windless, and actually pretty warm for mid-November.
I dont really know how to gauge the rate, but at the peak (5:30-ish EST?) I was seeing meteors about once every second with bursts of 6-7. It was hard to catch them all as they would appear in nearly every quadrant of the sky. After about the first few minutes I had already seen more meteors than I had seen in my entire life previously, so it was well worth the trip.
/joeyo
2^5
This meteor shower just rocked! I went up into the hills at Henry Coe State Park near Morgan Hill, CA to escape the skyglow, and the show was just incredible. I can't even estimate how many I saw (hundreds?), but at the peak they seemed to be coming down like a light rain (a meteor "shower", if you will). Many fireballs died with a bright flash and left a trail that lasted for 10 or 15 seconds.
What was especially fun was that it was so dark in the hills you couldn't tell if anyone else was there, until a fireball streaked across the sky and a hundred voices from the mountain said "oooooooh".