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Leonid Meteor Shower Observation Tips

Posted by Hemos on from the watch-the-skys dept.

mao che minh writes "For those of us around the world planning on stepping out and witnessing the Leonid meteor showers next week (November 19th), NASA is running an article that will help you maximize your meteor shower viewing enjoyment, straight from the experts' mouths."

23 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. my tips by Brian+Boitano · · Score: 3, Funny

    "make sure you are looking at the sky"

    --
    What would Brian Boitano do?
  2. What age? by HiQ · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... to the constellation Leo the Lion
    Be sure to watch out for Harry the Horse, Donald the Duck, Cleo the Camel and Tux the Penguin while sipping your cocoa!

  3. Whoa, time to go to bed. by supun · · Score: 4, Funny

    I thought the title said "Leonard Nimoy Shower Observation Tips" I could feel my eyes trying to rip themselves from my sockets. Whew, thank god for second glances.

    --
    :w!
  4. Light Pollution by Big+Mark · · Score: 5, Informative

    Quote:

    ""Try to get away from city lights," he suggests. "The darker the sky, the more meteors you'll see."

    Of course, if you live anywhere near a city your view will be obscured by that pleasant glow of street lamps. You'll HAVE to make a trip into the countryside to see anything but the brightest of meteors. I don't mind the Moon, as it's something to look at with binoculars during quiet bits of the storm.

    If you're in the UK, The Campaign For Dark Skies is an interesting site about this problem.

    This image, showing the entire world's wasted light, is also intriguing. Think of all the money wasted because idiot government officials allow such wastage.

    1. Re:Light Pollution by gleam · · Score: 5, Informative

      A side note, the Leonid Shower this year is actually a Storm.

      North America, at about 4:30AM of the 19th is about the peak time to watch for it.

      I've seen estimates ranging from 2,000 to 7,000 hits per hour, and some have even said 10,000 or (during the really high times) up to 1,000 per minute.

      So we aren't talking a little tiny shower this year.

      Next time we'll have a storm like this will be in about 36 years, so you should want to check it out when you have the chance.

      It's a shame the moon is nearly full that night, though.

      Anyway, even if you can't go too far out of the city, just standing in the shadow of a tall building will give you a decent view, given the sheer magnitude of the storm.

      -gleam

      --
      this .sig is not a .sig.
    2. Re:Light Pollution by simong_oz · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the same image as this (click image for full-res) which doesn't purport to show the 'wasted' light but is being used to study urbanisation?

      not trolling - just had that awesome image on my desktop for ages and recognised it straight away!

      --
      "Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
    3. Re:Light Pollution by Kaz+Riprock · · Score: 5, Informative
      Next time...in about 36 years...

      Unfortunately, the next time Temple-Tuttle (the source of the debris that we're watching) comes through in 30 or so years, it will not be passing close enough to leave a good amount of dust in our orbital path to create the kind of storm we're treated to this year. In fact the next pass after that still won't be close enough. It won't be until 2098 before it passes within .0062 AUs (close enough to get a storm in the following year or three).

      All of this information and some great viewing suggestions and times are attainable in a really good article at Sky and Telescope.

      --
      Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
    4. Re:Light Pollution by simong_oz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      But why is light at night automatically considered wasted? I would guess that a significant proportion of this light would come from home lighting (internal) and also car headlights which surely can't be considered wasted light? And is street lighting really a waste? Not only does it provide better driving conditions, but it also provides some measure of security.

      I'm sure there is lots of light that doesn't need to be turned on at night (office buildings) and is wasted, and I imagine it probably correlates quite well with city size, but it's not all wasted.

      --
      "Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
    5. Re:Light Pollution by fyonn · · Score: 4, Informative

      But why is light at night automatically considered wasted?

      because if you can see the light from space then the light on the ground going up and thats not too much use to us eon the ground. the headlights of a car go sideways and there's no way you'd be able to see that from space (well, not at thos resolutions).

      dave

    6. Re:Light Pollution by fjordboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I watched the meteor shower last year (which was incredible btw..) from the village of Trout Run, PA. Trout Run is in north central PA, about 20 miles from Williamsport (the closest town of any size). Trout Run has a gas station and a restaraunt that are open 24 hours a day, so they have normal "gas station" type lights. However, I was watching the meteor shower from camp susque which is about 4 miles down the valley, and it isn't a straight valley either...anyhow, we took a lot of pictures and in several of them, there is a SIGNIFICANT glow from the SINGLE gas station that is over 4 MILES away and partially obscured by mountains! It blew my mind..I didn't realize how bad light pollution was until then...I don't think there is any place in the US where you can get a truly dark sky.

      --
      The anti-salmon
  5. Re:time by billybob2001 · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the article (effort required to read)

    No matter where you live, the hours between 11:00 p.m. on Monday and dawn on Tuesday are going to be the best for spotting Leonids."

  6. Again? by kitsook · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is it going to be another meteor shower in a scale that we are "not going to see for several hundred years"?

  7. the 18th? by trans_err · · Score: 3, Funny
    Wasn't the shower supposed to be on the 18th when this originally posted or did one of NASA's borked computers realize the universe stopped again and they failed to tell us?

    I am SO on to them.

    --

    transmission_err

  8. Re:time by tigress · · Score: 3, Informative

    UT is Universal Time, aka GMT.

  9. Re:time by billybob2001 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...and as it's "No matter where you live" it might have been better to quote local time rather than UT, Internet time or Stardate.

  10. All very good advice by Dr+Thrustgood · · Score: 5, Funny

    But, alas, it misses out the vital ingredients:

    1) Invite ladyfriend along
    2) Bring blankets (can get a bit chilly)
    3) Bring whisky (see 2)
    4) Remember rehearsed "Isn't it beautiful, the depth, the colours. Alas, still not a match for your eyes" lines and other "romanticisms"
    5) Bring protection (see 1 + 4 + 3)

    You know it makes sense.

    1. Re:All very good advice by clickety6 · · Score: 4, Funny

      At last somebody has filled in the plan:

      1) Invite friend to geek event

      2) ???????

      3) Get lucky!

      --
      ----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
  11. Very Cool by ArmedGeek · · Score: 3, Funny

    I try to never miss one. Grab yer girl and go out and watch. In the past it's not failed to get me laid. Unfortunately, this year I'm going to be at work, so I'll get to watch, but without female companionship.
    Everyone feel sorry for me now.

    --
    Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
  12. Re:time by clickety6 · · Score: 5, Informative


    But if you want to know the peak time when thinsg should (hopefully) be at their best, try :

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

    It's a java applet where yu can select your location and get the time of the peak (although for some reason there are no cities in Germany!)

    --
    ----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
  13. You would think... by croftj · · Score: 3, Funny

    these things would happen in the middle of the day so we didn't have to wake up at three in the morning to see them!

    --
    -- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
  14. meteors by fjordboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I saw the shower last year and it was incredible. We saw hundreds if not thousands of meteors. At some points, you couldn't look anywhere in the sky and *not* see a meteor. It was truly amazing. If this year is half as good as last year, it should be pretty cool.

    However, no matter how many meteors there are and how often they come, it seems to be VERY difficult to capture them on film. Using an SLR camera with a cable release and a tripod, a friend and I used something like 5 rolls of films and probably only got 15-20 usable pictures that had meteors in. (You can check them out here at peterswift.org. And they weren't joking about light pollution either! We were pretty far out in the country in North Central PA at Camp Susque, but even the lights from a tiny town with one gas station and a restaraunt really made a lot of the pictures have big bright spots (and the town/village was about 3-4 miles away!).

    --
    The anti-salmon
  15. If you want to count the rate - here's a help... by wnknisely · · Score: 5, Informative

    NASA has posted a little Palm OS applet to aid people who want to try counting the meteor rate.

    You can find it here.

    And information about it over on Space.com.

    --
    In illa quae ultra sunt
  16. Re:Important telescope astronomy tips by Melantha_Bacchae · · Score: 3, Informative

    Most important telescope astronomy tip for meteor viewing:

    Don't use a telescope.

    Meteors are pretty zippy. By the time you get a telescope trained on the exact spot where a meteor was, it and twenty of its fellows will be gone. Its even hard to train a pair of binoculars on an individual meteor, unless it is a particularly slow moving fireball.

    Use your naked eyes (with glasses if you need them). Spend at least 20 minutes outside in the dark before begining any serious observations. Protect your eyes from street lights, porch lights, flash lights, looking directly at the moon, any light source that is non-red and/or bright. Do not go into your brightly lit home for anything.

    And if you are in the Northern hemisphere, dress warmly. It is November. Dress for 20 degrees below the actual temperature, in layers.

    General: "Increase voltage"
    Officer 1: "Turn power up"
    Engineer: "Captain, we're registering too much voltage for safety now."
    Officer 2: "Increase voltage"
    Voltage sound effects, shot of Godzilla struggling, cable burns through, substation fries, Godzilla is free.
    Scene from American version "Godzilla vs. Mothra" (1964)

    Mothra: boldly going where no starship captain had gone before.