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

Boston Massachusetts USA: Impresssive

[maggard]

Actually Wellesley Massachusetts USA, bedroom suburb about 15 minutes/miles outside Boston. With moderate glow from the city, nearby parking lots, and a streetlight 30 feet away. The horizon was entirely obscured by surounding houses & trees. From five to six am EST.

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!"