Leonid Meteor Shower 2002

Jacer writes "Adler press reports that 'approximately every 33 years the Leonid Meteor shower becomes a breathtaking meteor storm -- capable of illuminating the night sky with thousands of meteors per hour. Astronomers predict that the height of the storm over North America in 2002 could possibly generate 40 meteors every minute -- over 2,400 per hour!' Space.com has plenty of information available. I wanted to submit it early so you could plan ahead. It'd make for a long work or school day, but it's not something I'd care to miss."

Comments

2400 wishes per hour

[stoffel]

where's my wishlist...

Re:2400 wishes per hour

[unicron]

200 more an hour and this would be the 1337est meteor shower ever.

Re:2400 wishes per hour

[Dark Lord Seth]

Here's mine.

for (int i=0; i<=2400; i++)

cout << i << " - Sex with Alyson Hannigan";

Re:2400 wishes per hour

[ehiris]

As long as you don't wish for another meteor for every meteor you see, everything would be fine.

Re:2400 wishes per hour

[Cruciform]

mmmmmm, evil Willow

Think we can Slashdot a meteor shower?

Last year?

[c.derby]

I thought this was last year... Or was there another meteor shower?

Re:Last year?

[fjordboy]

last year it was over 40/minute at times. I saw it at Camp Susque, which is sorrounded by mountains (which means not too much light pollution...but..you also have limited viewing). We got some great pictures of them too..check my webpage later this evening and a lot of them will be posted...Last year was incredible..best I've ever seen it....we couldn't look anywhere and *not* see meteors at its peak (and several fireballs!). I plan on going out again this year....if it is half as good as last year, it will be mighty impressive.

The morning on November 19th

[Adam Rightmann]

is the peak. A little detail that would have been better in the introductory text.

Re:The morning on November 19th

[Surak]

Morning for which time zone?

(typing this real slow because I have to wait 20 seconds. grrr.)

Re:The morning on November 19th

[polymath69]

Morning for which time zone?

Basically for every time zone. You see, as the Earth rotates on its axis, it is also orbiting the sun. Some part of the Earth has to be plowing headlong into the trail of dust. And that has to happen at either the "dawn" line or the "sunset" line (think about it.)

If the Earth spun the other way 'round, meteor showers would always be best just after sunset. But, sadly, I was not consulted during the design phase...

Now that's the general principle. In this case, astronomers are predicting two particularly dense sections of the dust trail, one intersecting Earth's orbit at dawn Europe, and another around dawn East Coast Americas. But even people not in these locations should see the best local view at about an hour before sunrise.

Re:The morning on November 19th

[mesocyclone]

If the Earth spun the other way 'round, meteor showers would always be best just after sunset. But, sadly, I was not consulted during the design phase...

Obviously we need a project to reverse the earth's spin. After all, what decent geek gets up EARLY IN THE MORNING?

Certainly not me, which is why I usually miss these shows.

How time flies!

[PhysicsGenius]

Has it been 33 years since the last one already? And 66 years since the one before that?

And damn, I'm pretty sharp to have caught this, since I'm pushing 90 now...

Now all I have to do...

[Botunda]

Is get the hell away from NYC so I can see the sky fall.

Rerun...

[ackthpt]

approximately every 33 years the Leonid Meteor shower becomes a breathtaking meteor storm

That was sooo last year!

and it was pretty cool to watch while lying in the back of my pickup in the Mohave desert, hundreds of miles away from cloudy home!

Re:Rerun...

[chacha]

The Leonids happen every year, but on some years, they're brighter and fall at a greater frequency. It all depends on exactly how Earth passes through the Leonid stream from Comet Temple-Tuttle, which passes near our orbit every 33 years. However, even if the comet isn't there, its dust trails from previous orbits still are, and the big Leonid years are the years when we'll be passing through a more recent trail. Last year was supposed to be a Big Year because we passed through 2 dust trails. If this year is anything at all like last year, it should be a heck of a sight...

Now, if only there weren't that pesky nearly-full moon at the same time.

Um, did i say last year? i meant THIS year!

[Alcimedes]

ha ha, i still remember how last year was going to be this great meteor shower, and it was going to be the biggest one in a hundred years.

so me, being a sucker, sat outside in the mountains and froze my can off waiting for the sky to light up like it was US vs. Iraq and got jack

well, it wasn't exactly jack, but it certainly wasn't like daylight. however i will say that it was still one of the coolest things i've ever seen, and by all accounts it was a minor one. if you have the chance i highly recommend watching these. if nothing else it's a nice quiet hour or two to appreciate that some of the best things in life have nothing to do with technology.

Re:Um, did i say last year? i meant THIS year!

[stuffman64]

strange, last year's show was incredible, at least for me. I laid down in an empty field in central PA (about 10 minutes from Penn State - there are plenty of fields around here!) to watch the show. Early on, it was slow going, but there were many spectacular fireballs which seemed to come in a spectacular variety of colors. The pace picked up throughout the evening, and I recorded a total of 1,332 sightings in the hour between 4 and 5 AM local time.

Me, being the geek that I am, wrote a program for my TI-89 (with nothing but one of those red LED keychains) to keep track of button presses. This made it much easier to count than trying to keep track in my head.

The sad thing was, I was supposed to bring a hot chick with me to watch, but she must have figured out I was a Slashdot reader and she bailed on me. So, of course, I was all alone (as usual).

Re:Um, did i say last year? i meant THIS year!

[Anonymous Coward]

hey! i wrote on of those programs for my calculator as well!

it was something like this:
1,+
then =,=,=,= to count up!

it was cool!

Re:Um, did i say last year? i meant THIS year!

[GlassUser]

I brought a hot chick. I forgot to ask for one with a brain though. She spent the entire evening talking on the phone. I WISH she'd bailed.

We have a problem Houston!

[twoslice]

Look Skyward November 19 In The Early Morning Hours To Catch The Leonid Meteor Shower.

And just what! am I going to use to catch a Leonid meteor? and if I do, can I sell it on EBay without NASA busting me for selling a piece of space rock that they say belongs to them?

Re:We have a problem Houston!

[BabyDave]

Just remember, if you do catch it, you owe everyone a taco ...

Forever Cloudy

[thehun101]

I have always wanted to watch the Leonid Meteor Shower, but unfortunately I live in Cleveland where we have two types of weather. Cloudy, and Cloudy with Rain.

Remind Us!

[DarkHelmet]

I hope Slashdot is actually kind enough to remind us of this CLOSER to the date...

I'd hate to end up missing something like this and instead be out having meaningless sex...

Re:Remind Us!

[Repugnant_Shit]

You're posting on slashdot so I don't think you'll have to worry about having meaningless sex ;)

Re:Remind Us!

[flybrarian]

That shouldn't be a problem. All the other stories get repeated, so why shouldn't this one?

Gonna do it again

[r_j_prahad]

Last year I went camping out in the Arizona desert to watch these. I'll be going back there again this year as well.

Something I discovered last year... if you plan on doing any time exposure photography, don't leave the shutter open for as long as you normally would for a night sky photo. I ended up with a lot of fogged prints because of the high occurence of super-bright meteoroids. You know the ones I mean, the kind you can almost read by, the ones that leave fluorescing smoke trails that seem to linger for five or ten seconds.

And too bad I get drug screened where I work, it could've been a "wow - bitchin'" night.

You're gonna get mooned...

[aiabx]

Keep in mind this is two days before the full moon, so you're going to miss a lot of low magnitude meteors.
-aiabx

Re:Thats all well and good if you're in the south

[YrWrstNtmr]

Oh, and fucking. Lots and lots of fucking.

Obviously, you are not part of the core \ . demographic.

Re:Thats all well and good if you're in the south

[hero]

Oh boo hoo. I went to see last year's meteor shower and I'm up in northern Canada, we just brought lots of hot chocolate and we were fine, eh. Then one of the meteorites came flying down and landed in the field, it was still hot so we put some grass and wood on it and a huge bonfire to keep warm eh. Then the aliens came down and wanted their rock back so we had to give it to them, but they let us go without a probing, which was nice. Come to think of it, I think our hot chocolate's may have been a wee bit Irish. I like stories. Don't you like stories?

-hero.

DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE METEOR SHOWER!

[Hayzeus]

You'll be blinded, which will make you easy pickin's for the man-eating plants that will have sprouted by next morning. I mean, geez, doesn't anyone else here watch science documentaries?

Now or never!

[Scarblac]

This year's Leonid shower will be the last one for a long time to come! Earth won't pass through this comet trail for quite a while. The next probable year for a Leonid shower/storm is 2098, or maybe even 2131!

See this article for explanation. The dates are on page 4.

But for this year, a great show is still expected. So if you have half an option to go outside for a while (say, Nov 19), do so!

Re:Now or never!

[derch]

You're a little wrong. The Leonid shower happens every year. Typically, the shower is 10 an hour. This is the last year we will probably seen an amazing show of up to 1000 an hour.

And the Tempel-Tuttle comes every 1/3 of a century. That's 33 years. The next should be around 2033.

Re:Now or never!

[derch]

My bad. Didn't see the 'Next Page' links at the bottom. On the 4th page, it's explained that the orbit of Tempel-Tuttle changes a little on it's next pass or two. We will probably miss the new trail.

However, there's a slight change we'll hit an old trail or two in 2033 or 2034.

This probably is the last chance till late this century for a Leonid storm. The Leonid shower still occurs every year, though.

American Literature Quiz -- Cormac McCarthy

[Didion Sprague]

Before modding this off-topic, read the whole post:

Quick, any fans of Cormac McCarthy out there?

What book of his set in the 19th century prominently features the Leonids in the first few paragraphs?

Answer: Blood Meridian.

Quite possibly the best American novel written in the second half of the 20th century. It's about a band of American mercenaries who go into Mexico to hunt up scalps for pay.

(It's also one of the eeriest and most violent American novels written -- heads getting lopped off, horses getting slaughtered, and a very weird, Ahab-like character called 'The Judge' presiding over everything.)

Anyway, the main character -- the Kid -- is born beneath the Leonids, and the infrequent meteor shower during the night of The Kid's birth makes for a very strange sense of forboding. That, and the fact that the Leonids come every 33 years -- very Christ-like, I suppose -- so the kid gets marked with this odd mixture of innocence, wisdom, and violence.

So I had no idea what the Leonids were, and after reading Blood Meridian, I thought it was something McCarthy made up. But a little research, of course, proved otherwise.

The strange thing about the Leonids -- and about the cycle of Halley's (sp?) comet (Mark Twain was born when the comet appeared, died when the comet next appeared) -- makes for some interesting moments in American literature.

My question -- finally get back on topic -- is this: when all these meteors are shooting through the sky, do they burn up in the atmosphere? Do some make it through? You'd think if there were that many, one or two would cause some serious damage.

Take a photo, it lasts longer

[Cecil]

Seriously though, I know I plan on attempting to take some pictures this year, and hopefully something will turn out. For those of you complaining about a full moon, the moon doesn't rise until late in the night, which should give plenty of good photography time, particularly for those of us on the west coast.

If anyone else is interested in this sort of thing but isn't sure how to get started or what you need, this very good beginner's guide makes for good reading.

Digital Camera Tip:

[Manhigh]

Last year was the first year I tried using my digital camera (Olympus C3000) to catch the show, leaving the shutter open for up to 16 seconds.

What I didnt know is that CCD's have a transient response to temperature. Make sure to get out early and allow your camera time to acclimate to the temperature. Otherwise youll get very speckled photos.

Obligatory tips for first timers :-)

[Pat__]

A couple of tips for the first timers.
- Get away from the city lights (and pullotion) as much as possible.
- Have a good field of view because they will be all over the sky not just in the vicinity of Leo
- Do NOT concentrate at the spot where they will come from (Leo) rather about 40 degrees away, as odd as this may seem, the shooting stars around Leo won't leave a long trail (they will be coming towards you ) and you won't be seing much.

Last Leonid shower for donkeys'

[devnulljapan]

But it looks like this will be the last Leonid shower for quite a while.

As the comet Tempel-Tuttle approaches the Sun toward a May 2031 perihelion, it will pass within 1.5 a.u. of Jupiter in August 2029. This encounter will push the comet closer to the Sun and increase the distance between Earth's orbit and the comet's to 0.0162 a.u. -- their largest separation since 1733. Such a large gulf between the two orbits may preclude any substantial meteor activity for the year 2031, and for several years thereafter, when the next cycle of Leonid storms would normally be expected.

In examining this next Leonid cycle, McNaught has found three outlying dust trails that the Earth will approach in the years 2033 and 2034. "Unfortunately," he notes, "they are probably too distant for any reasonable chance of high activity."

There will be little improvement at the comet's subsequent return in 2065, for the separation between the orbits of the comet and the Earth will have diminished only slightly to 0.0146 a.u.

In 2098 the separation of the orbits shrinks to 0.0062 a.u. And in 2131, for the first time since 1633, the comet crosses our orbital plane slightly outside the Earth's orbit at a distance of 0.0089 a.u. Not until one, or both, of these remote years can our great grandchildren expect to witness a storm of Leonid meteors.

So get out there and see the damn thing. I'm in Northern Thailand, so not much hope for me :-(

The ads of fog

[DeadBugs]

I went to the Space.com website and most of the page was obscured by pop-up ads. Sadly this made me remember that last year I got up at 4 a.m. to watch the show and was greeted with thick fog.

Humidity and Visibility

[idiotnot]

I know that this was a problem when I went out to view a storm this past summer; I couldn't see anything because of the haze.

The Space.com article mentions that costal dwellers (yup, that's me) move inland.

My question is how much difference will it make when it's November? For the last leonid shower, I watched it out at Sandbridge (rather remote part of Va. Beach), and didn't have problems with the haze. Biggest problems were the cold (we didn't have the bottle of Jagermeister to warm us up like the VCU studends who shared the dune with us), and some clouds.

Would I be better off going inland, really, than to say, the Outer Banks?

Armagh Observatory 2002 plots

[sakusha]

Check these out:

http://www.arm.ac.uk/leonid/dust2002.html

Looks like we are in line with the dust trails from the famous 1767 and 1866 showers, when "meteors fell like rain." So there's a tiny chance it could be a shower of historic proportions. And of course the computer model for this prediction is experimental, the shower can (and probably will) turn out to be a dud. But ooh that one chance in a million that it could be a shower they're still talking about 200 years from now..

From my skywatching checklist

[LiamRandall]

If you are going outside don't forget these essentials:

-a blanket you don't mind getting mud/grass on

-a Deet based bug repellent (Unscented Off in the push spray works great)

-a small flashlight (so you don't ruin your night vision)

-take your Allegra _before_ you leave

-pants/long sleeves if you're bothered by bugs

And I would recommend:

-pillows

-snacks (Thermos w/ Hot Chocolate/Coffee, food you can eat with gloves on)

-spare jacket, sweater, gloves (layers!)

-wine

-small radio (I prefer a short-wave; in the middle of no where you can usually pick up different stations)

-a date ;)

-xtra blankets to 'cuddle' in

Re:From my skywatching checklist

[Graymalkin]

I'd addend to the flashlight a red filter as to better preserve your night vision. Novelty red Saran Wrap works pretty well to cover most flashlights, all you need in some wrap and tape. I prefer duct tape to get a better seal against dew as you'll get some condensation on the wrap because of cold air and a hot bulb. Sealing the wrap directly onto the flashlight lens I've found works well. If you've got a military surplus angle head flashlight you can probably pick up a red filter for it from the same place you bought it.

Also if you're going out in the middle of noplace and decide not to stay until dawn grab some reflective tape to attach strips to stuff you're taking with you like the Thermor or binocs. The full moon will give just enough light for the strips to be seen in the dark so you don't lose them when you set them down in the grass or something. Don't forget strips on your flashlights too. This seems counter intuitive until you set your flash down in the dark grass when its off and can't find it against until you sit on it.

For those with only a passing interest

[LiamRandall]

For all of the armature astronomers out there with a passing interest in this stuff, here are some helpful links for this years storm:

Where to find a dark place to view from: DarkSky.org

The storm forecast by city (US/World) from NASA: NASA

Astronomy Links In General:

NASA's J-Pass Satellite Passes: Near earth objects(Java,Email)

NASA's SkyWatch 1.4: Excellent for finding events (Java)

Satellite Related Software: For UNIX, Mac, Windows, Palm & more

SpaceWeather.com: Plan to see the auroras

SlashDot.org: Leonid's Last Year

Weather.com: Don't forget to check before you leave

By MichaelCrawford: This /.r makes telescopes

Tips: viewing and what I bring with me.

Sorry, full moon

[pease1]

The almost full moon will really impact this show... it will be best to wait until very early morning - 4am on the US east coast when the Moon is about to set, but before morning twilight starts to brighten the sky. Put something - like trees - between you and moon.

If you are out while the moon is up, you will learn just how bright the moon really is when you are away from city lights. After 20 minutes, you won't need a flashlight. Be sure to notice how you can't detect color very well.

While the moon is up, you will only see the brightest of the meteors, so don't expect anything like last year. Just hope and pray for a storm during the narrow moon set/twilight window.

yay

[loconet]

Finally being an unemployed programmer pays off. If i had to go to work on Tuesday I wouldn't be able to wake up at 4:00am to check this out.

Not a bad night for skywatching...

[hndrcks]

..except for the nearly full Moon. However, during the 'peak' Leonid period (3:30am - until daybreak) there are a number of other fine sights in the sky, many observable with good binoculars or a medium-size telescope:

1. Saturn's upper pole is currently pointed in our direction, which means you can see more of the rings right now than we will for many years to come.

2. Jupiter will also be high enough in the sky for a good view. The Galilean moons are breathtaking. On November 18th, viewers in the northern hemisphere will be able to see Ganymede occult Io for about 3 minutes - this kind of event is only possible to view from earth once every six years or so!

3. The Pleiades, also known as 'Subaru' or 'Seven Sisters', among other names. Very young, bright stars forming from gas disturbed in a supernova. With moderately powered binocs or a small telescope, one can see that the 'seven sisters' are just the brightest of hundreds of stars in an open cluster. An extended-exposure astrophotograph will show the clouds of bluish gas and dust still surrounding the stars.

4. My favorite - Orion, and the Great Orion Nebula. For viewers in the mid-northern latitudes, look for 3 stars in a straight diagonal line, almost due south at 3:00 am and about 2/3 elevated from the horizon to the zenith. Below those three stars (Orion's Belt) you should be able to find two dimmer stars in a vertical line (Orion's Sword) with a fuzzy patch in between (in darker areas). Good binoculars or a small scope will show one of the most beautiful sights in the sky!

So even if the Leonids crap out, there will still be things to see! Get that old telescope out and see what you can find!

NASA's plans

[Kaz Riprock]

In case you were wondering what NASA knows, tells, and plans to do about it:

http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/

Stuff that matters

[MaryAlice]

Good. It's nice to see /. doing it's part to help geeks appreciate how important showers are.