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Meet The Leonids
Kathy Miles writes "The Leonid meteor shower is promising to be a 'once in a lifetime
event.' It's not hard to photograph meteors, a simple 35mm camera
that you can lock open the shutter on works fine. Here's complete
instructions for 35mm, video and digital cameras.And, on the same site
is information such as lore and myth, best way to watch meteors and times and skymaps for all US timezones. Happy Meteor watching!" And Geert Barentsen writes "As the adrenaline for the final Leonid meteor storm (November 19th) rises, one site seems to do a call to everybody to count the meteor activity and help science. With a few thousand meteors predicted per hour, it's going to be a busy night for true geeks :-)" Kevin Smolkowski writes "For the second year in a row, NASA will have Live Coverage of the 2002 Leonid meteor storm on Monday. Perfect for those of you surrounded by
city lights. The all night show is hosted by NASA astronomers.
They'll offer observing tips, answer phone calls from sky watchers,
and tour the skies with a video camera located at the Marshall
Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama." Update: 11/18 22:40 GMT by T : McGravin writes "Everyone should also keep an ear on the extraplanetary visitors, too. I'm going to go add some ear-flaps to the tin foil helmet that protects my brain from them, so I can hear the meteors."
wow...they're going to be in huntsville? i live perhaps 30 minutes from there. does anyone know if they are offering a sit-in or something like that so locals can watch it easily? i called but they gave me the run around. if they do, i'll take pictures to share! :D
[ check out my ruby book @ http://ww
Wasn't last year's Leonid meteor shower also a once-in-a-lifetime event? I thought this was more like an ~80-times-in-a-lifetime thing.
I'm setting up my Tivo on the NASA channel so I can watch it during the day. I'll be the only guy to see this thing in broad daylight!!!
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
If you're not surrounded by insane light pollution ... make a point of watching this while you can. It may not be the same for years, maybe decades ...
Or is the Leonid shower billed as "once in a lifetime" every year?
I have done astro photos before and here is good tip when using a SLR camera:
To avoid wobbling the camera as you press the cable to start the exposure, just hold up a sheet of black paper in front of the lens. After the cable is dangling freely, remove the paper. When depressing the cable, do the same.
Also, for anyone with a Sony DV camera, the AE Candel Light mode works great for filming the showers.
when I spent three hours laying on my back on a sleeping bag looking into the cloudless northern Arizona sky only to see eight super no-big-deal falling stars. What a waste of time due to net hype - I can't believe I'm going to do it again.
Is there an insurance I can buy--or sue God for droppin' stones in my backyard !! I have when he/she/it does that !
I guess it was good last year but we were overcast. :(
I sat out there for a little while in a light drizzle and watched some bright blobs move behind the coulds.
Yesterday was beautiful and I was hopeful but today is looking pretty crappy.
Damn Washington weather is depriving me of the show of a lifetime.
On a better note I will get a full nights sleep.
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
I hope you never watched him shower...
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Everyone said I was crazy when I moved 30 miles out from the city. Now, with no city lights, I'll have a perfect view of the shower! Won't all of my friends be jealous! ...Oh yeah. None of my friends care about meteor showers...
Brought to you by Frobozz Magic Penguin Fodder.
Well shit. It's a bit late for that now. Oh well, I'll try and remember that in 30 years when the next one comes around.
Well, I have to admit that watching Leonid Breezhnev take a shower is not something that you can see everyday, but I think I'll pass anyway, thank you.
Best Windows Freeware
Asking Slashdotters.. To go outside.. I don't know if this is an insult or a mistake.
Is thing visible from the southern hemisphere or is it just another show that we never get down here.
Eastern Time Zone
Western Time Zone
Mountain Time Zone
Pacific Time Zone
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
For the second year in a row, NASA will have Live Coverage of the 2002 Leonid meteor storm
I wonder how they did this last year. Or did Nasa finally perfect its tachyon transceiver?
...at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama.
"Uh..oh, I did it wrong again. "Break one-nine." Houston! It's dark as crap up here. Ed's done busted out the capsule window trying to hit a satelite with a beer bottle and you need to instruct us on unclogging the toilet because they ate all the freeze-dried chili and they're tore up something fierce.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Anybody notice the stock photo in the NASA page? This picture. I think it's supposed to representing watching TV, but it's really a sad social commentary.
Here's a young boy, ready to go outside and move and run and play. He's got his cap on, and he's got his football under his arm.
But instead of choosing to play in the sun and use the arms and legs nature gave him to enjoy himself, he sits sullen and emotionless in front of a TV.
He chooses the bland garbage spewed forth by the corporate-run media, enticing him to stay on the couch, not to question authority, not take care of his health. They hope to sell him fast food, video games, and heart medication when he grows up.
Really quite sad.
Alternate explanation #1:
This poor little girl wants to play with her dolls and talk with her friends. But her father is a violent man, who regrets never having had a son before his wife's untimely demise. He forces her to hold a football and watch the game on TV. If she resists, she is soundly beaten. She quietly assumes the role of the son her father never had.
Really quite sad.
Alternate Explanation #2:
It's raining and the game was just cancelled.
Really quite sad.
Other that light pollution which will make viewing difficult for most city dwellers, we will have to contend with a full moon. Your best bet is to look towards the northwest or southwest to diminish the glare of the moon.
This will provide some interesting propagation on the VHF and UHF ham bands. Hopefully I'll be able to stay awake long enough to work a few stations on the ionized trails the meteors leave behind..
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
"For the second year in a row, NASA will have Live Coverage of the 2002 Leonid meteor storm on Monday" How exactly can you have 2 years of coverage of the 2002 Leonid meteor storm?
It's gonna happen between 5:30am - 6:30 here in Finland! Perfect timing, the sky is jet black! Just 5 hours and the show will start! Guys, kiss your girls!!!
Please stay alert for any traces of the former
Jon Katz orbiting the earth as a result of his
unauthorized visit to Afghanistan to interview
the famous Commodore-64 user and Geraldo Rivera.
P.S. Wasn't it George W. Bush (Even Less than
G. H. W. Bush) who challenged the world with
"bin Laden: Dead or Alive"? Thanks for nothing
Tom Daschle and the Democratic (sold out) party!
Cheers,
Woot
Scientifically speaking, there is a lack of visible background radiation (VBR, also called 'solar drift' because of its origins) in the sky right now because of the unusually large amounts of sunspots, so the view will be exceptional. Additionally, they will be brighter through a process called 'blueshifting' because they are heading towards us. Blueshifting is an application of the Doppler effect with light rather than sound -- the speed of the objects stack up the light 'waves' in front of them and in effect make the objects look bluer because of the shift upwards in the visible spectrum. The opposite, 'redshifting', would occur if the objects were heading away from us, as they will be next year.
Make sure you're out from the city to watch this great event, because light pollution will drown out part of the spectra that otherwise make this such a treat to watch.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
As has already been pointed out, there will be a full moon. Not only that, but at the peak viewing hours for the western continent inhabitants (especially those in North America) that pesky full moon will be almost exactly centered in the most active region for viewing.
Only the best and brightest will be visible, and though there's predicted to be more of them this year than typically the effect will be diminished by the lunar glow to a fairly typical rendition.
Any spoon would be too big.
Very very cool! I can't wait to see what ol' Leonid has in store for us tomorrow. I figure my fam and I will drive out of the city and find some place with a lot less light pollution. I think I'm going to take a digital camera with me and get some high quality pictures. wohoo! .. especially on cold winter nights, makes you happy to be alive.
Star gazing rocks!
I happened to be on a flight a few years ago (I think 1999) when it was a good year for the meteor shower. The show is even more fantastic from up above the clouds. The many colors you could pick out easily paid for the fare of the flight by itself, not that I planned it that way.
Too bad I can't justify getting up in a plane this year for the shower.
According to this NASA webpage, "The 2nd-best way to watch the Leonids. A royalty-free image from corbis.com."
Asking Slashdotters.. To go outside.. I don't know if this is an insult or a mistake.
So that's what this is all about? All this talk about a shower was making me nervous.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
I'll be near Arlanda airport, Stockholm, sitting in Boeing 747 when this happens!!!! I'm currently flying from New York to Stockholm. Lucky me!
It was AMAZING! It was like a large white disc suspended in the middle of the dark sky. It just floated there, which surprised me.
Through my telescope it looked like had mountains and craters on it.
It's the most amazing thing I ever saw in my life ever!!! I'm so glad I saw it!! There really is a God!
then again it could have been the acid talking since i dont know if we ever made it out of the trailer that night...
For those of us living in the biggest lightbulb on the east-coast (New York City), where's a good place for us to go to view the showers?
:)
Since most of us living in the city are without wheels to get away from the "light pollution" Are there any helpful hints from astronomers who are stuck in the city as well?
Thanks in advance!!
"I wish I had a Kryptonite cross, because then you could keep both Dracula AND Superman away." --Jack Handy
Damn, he's faster than Santa Claus!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I just got back in (Tues. morning here in Japan,) after having not seen a single one. (Worst combination of time, location, moon, clouds.)
:-(
Last year was amazing...
-- My Weblog.
you know, on the TV screen...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
NASA has been dumping over the Southern Hemisphere for years now.
just drive out to an isolated area and wait. If it is like what they are describing then anywhere would be good, although hanging around where all the astronomy geeks are is a good idea.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
Will anyone from San Diego (or thereabouts) be checking this out? I'm considering taking my jeep out to Ocotillo Wells (out past Julian on the 78.) If anyone is interested in a convoy, lemme know. I went out there a couple years ago (Summer 2000) for a shower and it was a good time.
It's desert, but folks with cars have no problems getting there. Luckily the sand is well packed, 4-wheel drive is not necessary (though to go beyond the dunes it is highly recommended.)
--
[McP]KAAOS
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
One per second for a couple hours in Colorado on morning of the 18th in 2001.
As far as seating goes, i've always found the most success, lying on a blanket [even with a foot of snow on the ground], as opposed to a lawnchair, because no matter how far back you lean in a lawn chair, your neck will be sore from craning in the morning.
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
I'm just wondering what will happen to them. Isn't there a rather big chance for one of them to be hit by one of the "thousands of meteors per hour"?
What? My old Physics classes taught me that this happens only when objects are moving at a relative speed that is a significant percentage of the speed of light. I doubt these meteors will be moving that fast.
And besides, what will be visible will be the trails of the meteors, which will be pretty much stationary, thus precluding any such shift in color.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
Kathy Miles writes
A woman visits slashdot.
That I'm getting a meteor shower for my birthday (19 nov). As long as the friggin' weather holds out, which weather.com tells me it should =)
+1 Informative? Hah! Somebody got burned...
The government is trying to fool us. Russian astronaut had a bad stomach and used the wrong toilet in space and now his shit is approaching earth.
Shouldn't you be posting goatse links?
For the last big meteor shower, I drove east for over an hour before I could start to see stars, and then parked in a private driveway to see.
Just make sure it doesn't focus on the paper, or you'll be taking pictures at 4 inches, instead of infinity.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I have a seven-month old baby girl/early morning alarm clock so was fortunate enough to be woken at 2.30am but sadly hardly any were visible here in Auckland... even with clear skies. The moon wasn't too much of a problem either - very bright but far enough removed that it didn't blot out the part of the sky (north east) that I was watching. Saw one or two though... Hope you enjoy it in the north you lucky dogs.
I am a leaf on the wind
couldn't find any info from the links from fark.com & in the article, anyone know if us aussies will be able to watch the show?
Here's a stupid question, are the digicams available that allow the shutter to be opened for an arbitrary amount of time ? .... that leads to a few more questions about the ccd technology but i'll leave it that...
It was to those people who died last year... Or can you say that I'm wrong?
My girlfriend and I watched the 2001 show from the waterfront in Vancouver. Haze and city glare notwithstanding, it was an incredible show!
I might be wrong, but it's definitely worth a look outside around 2-2:30.
-boredman
You can also hear the meteors as they whiz past Earth.
...use your FM receiver with an external aerial. Try to find a station a long way away (that's the difficult bit, as usually a nearby station gets in the way). Under normal circumstances the transmission should be difficult or impossible to detect, but when a meteor intervenes the signal jumps over the horizon and a brief fragment of the transmission can be heard. Depending on the type of transmission, it might sound like a tone, a fragment of music or voice, or simply noise. Contact lasts for as long as the meteor train persists, usually from 100 milliseconds to a few seconds.
They disrupt radio frequencies and cause them to rebound back into Earth's atomosphere.
This experiment back in 1999 did just that. I realize this is dated but you can listen to them youself.
4B4556494E
Wouldn't they have to be traveling at about 0.01C or faster to have any perceptible blue-shift?
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
Get a boat, go out a mile or two. Should be much better.
To those people who died last year!!! Can you argue??
event to those people who died last year. Or can you argue???
The Leonids would be cool if they were Open Source.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I can tell ya exactly how many meteors we'll see in the Chicago area: zero. nada. zilch. Just like all the other meteor showers for the last few years. And it's got nothing to do with the lights. This place has got to be the worst place in the solar system to view astronomical events and it's all because of the weather. Any mention of a meteor shower guarantees that Chicago and anywhere within 75 miles of the city will be under heavy clouds.
The first link promises "complete instructions for 35mm, video and digital cameras," but the page actually consists of complete instructions for 35mm cameras, and advice along the lines of "video and digital cameras probably won't work, but go ahead and try them."
This shit joke is damn funny! Imagine loose shit dropping out of the sky burning in the atmosphere!
For relativistic blueshift, the frequency of light will scale by the lorentz equation:
f' = f * sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)
For a 10% blue shift, the relative speed would have to be about 0.4*c = 1.2x10^8 m/s = 432,000,000 KPH = 268,430,000 MPH.
Hell, protons coming off of the sun only hit one million MPH.
High speed meteors hit the atmosphere around 80 km/s (damn fast if you think about it!) = 288,000 KPH = 175,950 MPH. This would result in only a 0.000000712% change in apparent wavelength. Not to mention that it will slow down drastically as soon as it hits the atmosphere.
Besides, there is no reason to think that even if there were any blueshift it would cause these things to be more visible to the human eye. I would imagine that it has something like a blackbody spectrum which will cover a very large portion of the visible spectrum, with the peak concentrated somewhere around the yellow - where our eyes are pretty sensitive already.
Furthermore, optical background radiation is only a few photons per second - not hardly enough to make any difference to the human eye, and AFAIK, sunspots have nothing to do with it. Besides, sunspots aren't particularly out of whack right now: Solar Physics Dept of Belgium (Official sunspot counts).
-- Heisenberg might have slept here.
This is a question for San Francisco Bay Area residents: is anyone here planning to view the meteor shower tonight? space.com suggested a location that is open to the east, since the shower will emanated from just above the eastern horizon. I was looking for suggestions for a good place to watch. I am relatively new to the Bay Area, and thus am not familiar with the local geography. Is there a place within 60 miles or so that is relatively removed from city lights, and allows once to observe the eastern sky? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Go to this site to determine the best viewing time for your location and the predicted count.
Phoenix
In Soviet Russia, Leonid watches YOU!!!
It seems like every year since 1998 they've been predicting the best meteor shower ever. *jaded* Ah, it appears this will be the last one. Perhaps I will get up at 4AM again. I did it last year and it was really impressive -- even the view from our window was something.
Jesus! Who modded this informative? This is the biggest load of crap I've ever seen. Where did YOU take Physics 101??! If these meteors were traveling fast enough to blueshift:
say, 400,000 Kph, and massed 1kg each:
KE=1/2MV^2
1/2(1000)(4e10)^2 = 8e23 ergs = 80,000,000,000,000,000 joules = about 19 megatons EACH!
RUN FOR COVER!!!!
Cronus
I have already started my log. Partly cloudy except in the area of the moon. None yet. but it's only pre-20:00.
Sorry, that should read:
say, 400,000,000 Kph, and massed 1kg each:
KE=1/2MV^2
1/2(1000)(1.2e10)^2 = 7.2e22 ergs = 7,200,000,000,000,000 joules = about 1.72 megatons EACH!
I don't know what I was thinking... ; P
Cronus
For any individual viewer observing the Meteor Shower is a safe event; the risk of damage from a meteor is much lower than the chance of being eaten by a bear during the same time frame.
However - for the Earth as a whole that is not true. If one of the meteors which broke off the comet is only 50 or 60 meters in diameter the result would be an impact similar to Tunguska in the last century; a 20 to 30 megaton blast capable of destroying a city and killing millions.
The chance that we will lose a city somewhere on earth to an impact event during this century is about one in five.
Last year's Leonid meteor storm didn't happen at all, there were hardly any meteors at all. This year's biggest Perseid meteor shower in a dozen decades didn't happen either, there weren't any more meteors than on any other night. It's all a hoax, astronomers don't really have a clue. They like to spout off and act like they know, but they don't. They're like all the Linux assholes who answer every question with RTFM because they have no clue either. Astronomers are just a bunch of thieving weasels who like to get people to go outside and look up so they can sneak in their houses and steal their stuff. For real.
Just like last year's big Leonid "meteor storm" that didn't happen. Or this summer's spectacular Perseid non-event. Duh. How many times will you stupid people get sucked into looking for meteors that just aren't there?
(Sometimes you gotta feed the trolls. This bastard earned it.)
If you go outside and stare blankly at the sky, you won't see anything, just like the people in the northern hemisphere. It's a hoax, just like last year's big meteor storm was.
Once in a lifetime?
my fat arse
The leonids come through for 2-3 year recurrent periods every 31 years.
and some years they come through when you haven't got a full moon in the sky (unlike this lot).
that would be a lot closer to "once in a lifetime"
I wish the astromony nuts would stop over-inflating expectations.
the best meteor showers i've seen have been completely unexpected and un-announced.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
How on earth (or just slightly off it) do you get a "once in a lifetime" event for something that happens annually?
well, I suppose if you get hit by a lump of rock that didn't burn up completely it might be...
STF
After seeing this, I'll be sure to park my car in the garage tonight!
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 2F18
He should really be careful.. sitting too close to the tv is bad for your eyes.
Alternate Explanation #4: ...
Alternate Explanation #5: Profit!!
I'm a minister!
Not all of us here are fat slobs, munching cheesy-poofs in front of the CRT! I spent the weekend with my Texas Army National Guard unit in the field. We're an infantry unit so there wasn't much sitting around the office. On Saturday night, I got a great view of meteor showers while I was doing a nighttime land navigation course. Speaking of meteors (and since that is our topic here), you're not out of luck if you don't make it out tonight or tomorrow. They've been falling in great numbers for the past few weeks.
Me, I think I'll spend the night in a windowless room and come out in the morning to a world full of people blinded by the mysterious alien rays, but I'll have to watch out for the Triffids roaming the landscape eating all and sundry.
;-)
Of course, if John Wyndham had written Day of the Triffids after the advent of the Internet, he'd have used geeks as his accidentally-sighted protagonists instead of a bandaged hospital patient. The hardcore geeks will probably be taking advantage of the bandwidth everyone else isn't using 'cause they're all outside skywatching, and will catch their meteors on the NASA site
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Actually, if you're going realitivistic speeds, you have to apply the lorentz equation to get the Kinetic Energy.
;)
At a few thousand blasts per hour, that would be enough to significantly warm the atmosphere, and since we'd be hitting them head-on, it would slow the earth's orbital velocity, dropping the orbit closer to the sun. Hope you can swim.
KE = (1/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2) - 1) * mc^2
So for v = 1.2e8 m/s (~10% blueshift) and m=1kg
KE = 10% * 1kg * 9e16 m^2/s^2 = 9e15 Joules
which would only be about 2-9 Megatons (depending on your coversion factor.)
Of course, our big bombs today are about 20 Megatons, but Hiroshima was only about 12 kilotons. So I agree - RUN FOR COVER!
FWIW, I also realised that it would have to be coming straight at you to see the full blueshift - if you saw a tail at all, it would be entering at an angle and the shift would be diminished by a cosine factor.
-- Heisenberg might have slept here.
You rule.
-- Heisenberg might have slept here.
i am in iowa 3 hours east of you and it is starting to clear...set the alarm for 4 am!
GRRRR. Clouds. And fog. Can't even see a single star.
Every single celestial event I've wanted to see, has been ruined by clouds. I was at the total solar eclipse in 1999 and that was completely overcast too!
This is the thickest fog and clouds I've seen since last winter. Strangely enough the weather's been quite reasonable up until tonight.
Damn British weather. To hell with this, I'm going to bed!
i just might watch it. oh well, it's only 30min earlier than usual, guess i'll just have an extra cup of java.
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
hippie 1: i can hear the meteors, man!
hippie 2: yeah, man... if you sit over here, you can hear the mountains, too!
maybe it's time to lay off the peyote...
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
What can I do about all these stupid clouds?!? Stupid Michigan weather! It _was_ nice today... I don't wanna wait 30 more years...
This useless space for sale, inquire at front desk.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but here in Michigan we can't see anything but clouds. Well, at least it settles my debate about Stargate:SG1 vs The Leonids.
It's going to be overcast until morning. Looks like I'll have to wait another year.
My star chart seems to show the constellation Leo in the northeast at 2:30am Arizona Time. Is this the best direction in which to look?
Is it me, or is every year the "last chance" for the "best ever." I feel like I'm buying a used car. Last year was great! But they said it wouldn't be good until 2099, or something. Here's the Slashdot Article, so yes go look, yes have a good time, but don't think this is the last time we'll see leonids in our life time.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
Here in Southern New Hampshire the skies are clear even if they're not dark (full moon plus all the man-made light). I just saw 5 meteors in about 15 minutes of watching, 3 whose trails stretched nearly halfway across the sky and the other 2 were little ones.
Sorry about those of you whose weather is working against them. I'm going back out to watch after grabbing another couple of layers of blanket.
As of about midnight, it's relatively overcast in Northern Virginia. Can't really see much. Hopefully it will be clear in a few hours. Everyone cross there fingers :).
From weather.com:
33F
Cloudy Feels Like
33F
UV Index: 0 Minimal
Dew Point: 30F
Humidity: 89%
Visibility: Unlimited miles
Pressure: 30.34 inches and steady
Wind: calm
As reported at Dulles Arpt., VA
I wont see it to much clods :_(
My life sucks
Michigan is currently the only place in the US w/ cloudy skies. Give me a friggin' break...
Search: leonid counts
:)
Result #1
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 10:01:47 -0500
Once again, I question if the difficulty of finding stuff can still merit the expense of the broadband I subscribe to. I'd have cancelled it by now if I could find a trustworthy registrar who 1.) forwards mail 2.) accecpts money orders (bank no longer offering smiley face since my being laid off)
Kinda trapped with the cable modem for now since I run the mail server for my domain on it.
Oh yeah, anyone know a site for leonid reports?
Not a dud, but hardly the stuff of legends. I was lucky to have two bright ones shortly after I started to watch -- these helped me locate the putative point of origin, even though, for the most part, I could see very few stars in that sector of the sky because of the lights of Manchester, NH. There I saw a lot of the little guys whose trails weren't much longer than a couple of times the moon's diameter.
Now I gotta read up on this stuff. Why is this stuff hanging around at just this point in the earth's orbit? Our planet has to hustle around the sun to keep from falling in...why haven't these little bits of comet debris fallen into the sun.
Is this visible from the land down under?
illinois
12:14 AM CST
Clear Skies
No Leonids seen during 15 minute watch.
I've seen this a few times, actually. My last three trips to Indianapolis (I live in Oklahoma City), I've seen meteors either while flying to or from Indy. The first trip was a year ago, and I saw them between St. Louis and Terre Haute; the second was in September, and I saw them between St. Louis and Springfield, MO; the third was last weekend, and I saw them just as I was leaving Springfield, MO. It's absolutely amazing to see; on two different occasions, I've seen meteors, pulsing green, pass through my altitude. Truly stunning. Matter of fact, it inspired me to write a column about meteors. I'm not going flying tonight, but I am going to go watch the showers; I encourage everybody else to do so as well.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
Australia? Europe? Is it worth the rest of us staying up to watch?
For those who in clouds or daylight can tune their FM radio to some far FM channel(102+ MHz) where there is no FM radio signal. Whoosh whoosh sounds you will hear :)
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
an internet style nazi, just what the world needs, you little plastic man.
At 2am, there is a bright trail every 2-3 minutes. Given the full moon, and that I am in a city, not bad, should be a lot better in a couple of hours....where's the red bull.
Look east, most of the trails are running east-west towards where the moon is now.
I spent the whole night out, freezing. Until 4am, I didn't see anything... and then I saw a very bright green one that crossed the sky. Beatiful. Then two smaller red ones, and then a green one that left me breathless, it slow-burned while falling to the East. That one was simply amazing. Then a few smaller ones, then again some big ones... in the end, I saw 16 leonids, 7 of them being brighter than Venus and really beautiful. The moon wasn't much of an annoyance -- I wasn't expecting to see a single one from down here! Instead, I got 16. I couldn't be happier!
Leandro from La Plata, Argentina.
leandro@leela.com.ar
So enjoy!
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Up at 4:00 to see the show, and it's overcast. But when was the last time you found all the NASA TV streaming sites /.'ed at this hour?
Twice last night when I saw a meteor I heard a pinging noise. I thought it was just a combination of a windchime and coincidence, but maybe not!
use constant PERL_IS_BROKEN => $] >= 5.006;
There was a thick layer of fog last night. I'm most irritated.
I didn't see all that many, ~20 tonight. Mu eastern Horizon isn't really visible, but they didn't seem to be all the way over there.
Maybe if it was pitch black...anyways, I guess I will have to simulate it on my phat linux box. It would be more rewarding anyways: to code all night basking in the warmth of my pII& warm to touch scsi disks until the wee hours of morning when suddenly - I get a clean compile & there are all these openGL shooting stars everywhere when I set the date forward 30 yrs to see the next Leonids, and then 1030 yrs, 4.5 billion years, then during the Big Crunch...
Just saw one (3 minutes ago) big one (saw it on the lake first) split apart into 4 diffrent smaller ones each leaving a lingering visible trail. it was fscking RAD, couldn't miss it.
I woke up at 4:30 a.m. to study for a test in school but I remembered this story so I went out to my backyard for a look. I stood behind a plant to block the moon, and luckily I saw 1-2 streaks across the sky a minute. Unfortunantly I got cold so I came back in, but still an interesting look. Now I study.
Looks to me like someone estimation tool was proven wrong this year. Last year (2001) kicked this year's ass.
My personal data:
2000: 68 per hr
2001: 450 per hr
2002: 93 per hr
M@
Krispy Cream is people
Sadly, it was too cloudy to see anything really. We got a glimpse of 2 or 3 around 5:20, but that was about it. The radio sure liked it though ;)
,
faeryman
It's pretty cloudy in North-East Pennsylvania... I can make out some of the brighter stars (and planets). I did see a few shooting stars, though! Just barely bright enough to shine through the clouds. The Sun's coming up soon, though, and the sky's starting to get too bright to see much else. Last year was definitely better here...
-Smoke.
(off to get some more hot caffeine!)
Well, I stayed up for this, and it was well worth it. From about 10 miles outside of Casper Wyoming, we saw approximately 70-90 meteorites fall, some big, some small, and a green one. It was simply amazing and I'm glad I was able to witness this phenomenon.
That is all.
*tap tap tap* this thing on?
Living in the middle of Atlanta, my viewing conditions were about as far from ideal as they could be. The light from the city is extreme, not to mention there was very, very heavy cloud cover tonight.
That said, what a show! I threw on a heavy coat, took a thermos of hot coffee down to the pool area at my apartment complex and relaxed in a lounge chair. I reclined to give myself the perfect view of the constellation Leo... well, more accurately, a perfect view of the dense clouds covering the area of sky where Leo should have been. I waited from about 4:45 - 5:30 before the first real break in the clouds appeared. What followed was about 30 minutes of some of the most memorable celestial activity I have ever witnessed. Even with all the light interference, I saw probably a hundred bright streaks across the sky, some coming in rapid succession. Most left amazing smoky streaks behind them that lingered for a few seconds.
I hope everyone else with conditions as poor as mine stuck it out. It was truly a sight to behold and never forget.
This is not the sig you're looking for.
At about 2:15 the number of meteors/min started picking up; bursts of four of five in a few seconds.
This became nearly steady at about 2:35 until around 2:55, with many small, fast streaks and several large and bright meteors. Total count 104 or so between 2:00 and 3:10 AM PST. I was alone an a lawn chair on
our very moonlit suburban side street.
This was way superior to last year (caught under brutal 'tule fog' at a Napa resort - hot tubbed instead of freezing in the dark) or 2000 ( scudding
fog and clouds in Pacific Grove, outside Monterey).
Good luck Hawaii!
I bought this house and you know I'm boss
Ain't no h'aint gonna run me off
Is a fake Yahoo link.
http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/
He is in the group at the top. The pictures will likely be here.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Absolutely majestic. The meteor shower peaked around 4:50 local time, when I counted 55 in a 5-minute period. Some of the meteors happened simultaneously. I'm glad I set my alarm for 3:30 (although it took quite an act of willpower to get up)!!!
It was raining here in Ohio, so no visible sign of the Leonids. But I got up early and turned on my ham 6M and 2M rigs and heard lots of meteor-scatter activity.
Meteor trails ionize the atmosphere, making them reflective to radio waves. You can bounce signals off the trails, and there were bunches of folks doing that this morning, particularly on the 6M (50MHz) band, which is optimum for this sort of thing.
It's really interesting to listen to. You hear nothing, then all of a sudden the signal goes to S9 (ie, strong) and stays that way for anything from a couple of seconds to a minute or more. Then it fades away and you wait for the next burst.
I only had a low power transmitter, so listened a lot more than I talked, but I did work a station near Boston, MA who heard my 20 watts with no problems during a good burst. Better equipped stations were working from the east coast to well west of the Mississippi.
Well of course it is. You're not going to see the 2002 Leonids next year, now are you??
Having said/spewed that, I got up aroudn 4:00 CST and watched for most of the hour. It wasn't the best I've seen, but for the brief time I watched, it was pretty good. I'm in Memphis, TN and near the city lights, so I definitely wasn't in the optimal viewing situation... I remember a much better shower last year. (yep, one a year - whether I need it or not...)
Crappy Michigan weather. Completely overcast all night and into the dawn.
I actually got up at 5 a.m. and drove to the outskits of town to watch the shower. It was great, I counted 100 in 20 minutes. If it wasn't so cold here I would have stayed out longer (35F, I know thats balmy for some of you, but cold for Tallahassee). At least the skies were clear.
Some seemed to skip along the atmosphere, fading in and out. There were several doubles and triples going off in different directions. Full moon, but it was low in the sky by 5 a.m. and didn't seem to cause too much back glow. Can't wait for the next big one 100 years from now.
I am very glad I woke up to see it, I just wish I had the time to go out further from DC to watch it.
I would hope not ... what exactly is the likelihood that the Earth as a whole will be eaten by a bear?
--grummerX
Random reinforcement is a terrible force. I set my alarm to get me up in time to see the predicted second wave and I'm glad I did.
Shortly before dawn, about 5:15 to 5:45, I spotted 52 more meteors. Full moon was fairly far down in the west but the city lights and rosy fingers of dawn were still there to contend with. I envy the people who could see colors!
My girlfriend and I went out to the lake which is about fifteen miles from the brightest dang town on the planet. Got there around midnight and parked at a picnic spot where they had covered benches, so we used the cover to shade our eyes from the moon and looked eastward. After about a half hour of noticing that most of the show was further right from where we were sitting we adjusted our view and got an even better show.
Left around 130 since we both had to be up at 800 , but still saw a great show, probably between the two of us we saw about 100 in an hour. Considering there was just enough haze in the sky to let the moon illuminate it and the city wasn't helping either, it wasn't wasted effort. I was really surprised to see how many cars were heading out to the lake at two in the morning as we were leaving, it is a national park and not a lot of people hang out there after dark. Anyone else on slash in the vegas area check out the show How was it after 130
Please give your mod points to others, Im at the cap. They will appreciate it more
You're right of course, I wasn't thinking that far ahead! (Yes, I was lucky to get the math right on the second try yesterday).
I saw about 200 meteorites in an hour this morning. I don't remember any of them going of with a force more than a megaton or so ; )
Cronus
Did anybody capture it?
Wasn't really as good as last year, but the sky was more clear, and on the West coast, the moon was pretty low in the sky by 2:30am.
What I saw were a few average ones, (not a lot of really bright fireballs, many trails, but no trains). And there was an odd pattern to them. We'd see 5-10 of them in the space of about 30 seconds, then nothing, absolutely nothing, for 5-10 minutes, then another little burst. That was pretty much it from 1:45 to 3am, the times I was out. I didn't have time to review my video footage, I assume it's going to suck. I used a Sony DCR-TRV20 with "nightshot" on. Got some good video of my kids oohing and ahhing, but nothing was showing up in the viewfinder at all. I think the key to meteor showers is a wide-angle lens. Or luck.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I went out to observe the Leonids at 4:00 am and stayed out until
5:10 am. The moon was very bright so the limiting magnitude was about 4 or 4.5
(vs. 6 in a typical dark sky). You could see all the prominent stars in the
constellations, but there were plenty of stars I knew you should be able to see
with your naked eye that were invisible due to the brightness. There was about
40% thin cloud cover at first, which decreased throughout the night to none by
the time I went in. The clouds were thin enough that even when they covered a
constellation you could still see the brighter stars. The main thing they did
was light up the sky even worse than the moon alone would have.
At first very little was going on. There were no meteors at all the first 10
minutes or so. I was beginning to wonder if it was just too bright and
thinking about going in. Then I thought I caught a couple in my peripheral
vision. Then one that was clearly visible. So I decided to stay out. Good
call.
It built up slowly, then seemed to jump dramatically about 4:30 (I didn't
remember a watch so the times are guesses). I saw 3 of them which came so
quickly in the same part of the sky that they were all visible at once. Then
after about a 5 second pause another 2 happened simultaneously. A friend
mentioned seeing similar bursts in his email about the Leonids. My guess as to
the explaination for these is that one particle breaks up high enough in the
atmosphere that it isn't glowing yet, then each part continues on roughly the
same trajectory so they burn up at roughly the same spot at the same time. I
saw a few of those bursts and so did he, so it seems too common for random
chance. I never saw 3 simultaneous meteors in different areas or different
trajectories, so it seems to me there must be a cause for why the paths were so
similar on all the observed bursts.
During the peak there were several meteors a minute. At the very highest point
it was probably 10 or more per minute. I was wondering if I could keep accurate
count they were coming so fast. Unfortunately, that is where the intensity of
the shower quit increasing. It only lasted a few minutes then it was back to
the 2-5 per minute range. The peak lasted about 15-20 minutes, then it started
tapering off. By the end I had to wait several minutes between meteors again,
although I'm sure there were many, many faint ones all along I just couldn't
see.
Almost half of the meteors I counted left visible trails which lasted from one
to several seconds. This is way higher than I expected. I wonder if the atmosphere was so saturated from the thin
cloud cover that they were leaving contrails just like jets do on certain days.
I saw 2 which were definately brighter than Jupiter. The brightest was much
brighter, probably as bright as Venus. It left a multipart smoke trail the
brightest chunk of which was also brighter than Jupiter. The trail was visible
for about 15-20 seconds. There were another 6-8 which were brighter than
Regulus (magnitude 1) and probably a dozen or more roughly equal to regulus.
Overall I saw 108 meteors, 50 of which left trails. I also recorded 15
"probable" meteors where I saw a flash in my peripheral vision but couldn't
lock onto it fast enough to be positive it was one. I'm sure the number would
have been much higher if I could have gotten to a dark sky but the moon,
clouds, and Eden Prairie backyard skyglow conspired to wipe out the majority of
the meteors which were too faint to see.
My motto is: Never give up - unless it's harder than you want it to be.
I drove up Mt. Hamilton, east of San Jose, CA, to an area that would have been pretty dark except that the full moon was blazingly bright. There was a bit of haze, which the moon lit up as well, so only the brighter stuff showed. I'd guess that between 2am-3am we saw maybe 50-100, though we weren't counting. A few were quite impressive, but it wasn't anything like last year's amazing show. I'm not sure how much of this was because of the number of meteors going by and how much was because the moonlight made all of the dim ones invisible, while last year was dark enough we could see far more of the meteors that went by and better details on the ones we saw.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
A few years back, I was out in Colorado for the August meteors. One night I was out camping and got a good view of the early ones, and the main night of the shower I was floating in a hot spring outside of Steamboat. It's an idyllic and relaxing way to watch, and beats freezing the night away.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
... I drive up to my folks up in the Berkshire mountains where you can see the Milky Way on a clear night in order to get a good seat for the show, and there's fucking pea-soup clouds backlit by a full moon..
Where's the cloud-seeders when you need them?