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Leonid Meteor Shower Tonight
The annual Leonid meteor shower hits tonight, as the Earth moves through the orbital path of a comet. The show is exceptionally good every 33 years, and in 1966 it was so dramatic some people thought the world was coming to an end. No one knows how it will look this year, so keep your fingers crossed. You
don't need a telescope,
just
warm clothes, patience, and clear skies.
The Leonids'
unpredictability
make it worth going out as soon as it's dark, but the peak is supposed to be between 11 PM and 1 AM (EST?). If it's cloudy, check out
NASA's weather-balloon webcam.
The hint to seeing this in NYC is to not necessarily have the lights on. When you look up, make sure there are no lights in your vision, including peripheral.
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
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My mom's going to kick you in the face!
NPR ran a spot on the meteor shower this morning. One thing they mentioned is that hard-core astronomers are heading to Europe and the Middle East because that is where the center of the storm will be at peak intensity. They said that best viewing will be between 9-10pm EST, and the possiblity exists for up to 1000 shooting stars per hour. The main subject was how vulerable the sattelites in orbit are going to be. Tune in your favorite NPR station today at 4pm, they should rerun the spot.
In (I believe, I may be off by a year or two) 1833, Abraham Licoln was awakened during the wee hours to be told that the final judgement had arrived. Apparently, God was pretty pissed. The Leonids were putting on one of the best shows in (Western) recorded history, and they had no idea how to deal with it.
Second, this will STILL not be multicast! Even NASA, who have multicast facilities, won't interrupt some pre-recorded multicast which they've been repeating every 10 minutes since mid-day, for the meteor shower of the millenium. Last year, all of the sites broadcating webcams and RealAudio links were overloaded to the point of collapsing. BUT THEY WILL NOT LEARN!!! What is WRONG with these people?!?!?! The meteors should land on these idiot's thick skulls and thwack some sense into them!
(Can you tell I like multicast technology, and DON'T like horrible lag?)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
And don't trust the predicted peak time too much. Last year it was about 18 hours earlier than predicted. We had an excellent display in Scotland.
Yes they will get the full force of the show. It will be highly visible in the US after 3am when the Moon sets.
I saw one of them on my way home from work last nite (7pm, Columbus, Ohio). It streaked across the sky, and eventually brokeup into smaller pieces that each streaked and then faded into nothingness. (and yes I was cursing that I didn't have my Oly2000 digital camera with me at the time) I've watched meteor showers before, but I never saw one this big, bright, or with such a long tail.
http://slashdot.org/~tf23/journal
If that's the one that went west-to-east, it wasn't a Leonid (for sure). It was almost certainly a piece of space junk.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Note that the ZHR is a /theoretical/ maximum that would be seen by an observer if the radiant (the line of comet's orbit, ie the place in the sky where the meteors appear to radiate away from) were directly overhead. Actual observed rates are always lower.
Hints and tips for observing :
Finally, don't be too disappointed if you "only" get a ZHR of a few hundred. Last year's observations allowed significantly better understanding of the separate streams of debris coming off the parent comet. Predictions are for a relatively quiet year next year, but much higher ZHRs in 2001 and 2002.
Clear skies, all !
North American Meteor Network /VERY/ high traffic at the moment !
Meteorobs mailing list -- NB
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"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Hopefully a meteor will gently smack the Hubble and fix it. :-)
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
I just pray that the shower doesn't suffer the slashdot effect. I'd hate to stare at empty sky for hours just to learn that the shower crashed under the load when all the east coast geeks watched.
See also :
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Leoniods 99 updates.
American Meteor Society
This is X/posted w/out permission (sorry Marc! )
\a
I N T E R N A T I O N A L M E T E O R O R G A N I Z A T I O N
1999 Leonids: Rapid Information Dissemination
=============================================
Dear meteor observer,
>From earlier communications, you have learned that the IMO is setting
up a communication network to obtain reliable information as soon as
possible after the event in the morning of November 18. We invite you
to contribute to this effort.
First of all, we want to point out you must DISTINGUISH between the
USUAL OBSERVATIONAL REPORTS, such as collected by the IMO's Visual
Commission, and which may be used for detailed, global analyses, and
the "EXPRESS REPORT" described below which serves as sole purpose the
compilation of a rough but reliable picture of the activity within
hours after the event.
The EXPRESS REPORT should have the following format:
Meteo R. Observer
Fireball City (45N 10E)
Time Interval (UT) Lim. Magn. Nr. of Leonids Remarks (if any)
-----------------------------------------------
01:15-01:30 5.8 27 None
01:30-01:45 5.9 56 None
01:45-02:00 6.1 156 None
.
.
.
To the extent possible, bin your observations for this "express report"
in time interval of 15 MINUTES.
(Again, the full report of your observations will be different from
this express report, as shorter intervals are required as well as
magnitude distributions and some additional data - see the earlier
posted article with visual observing hints - but the above data
suffice for the purpose indicated.)
If you wish to collaborate with the IMO in this respect, please send
your express report for the night of November 17/18 ONLY (or, of course,
for any unexpected activity you might happen to witness)
*** IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE OBSERVATION *** to the following email
addresses:
wgn@imo.net
gyssens@hcoss.uia.ac.be
The latter is a back-up address in case Web-site access to www.imo.net
would prove to slow down our computer too much. This back-up address
will be active only on November 17 and 18!
Thank you in advance for any collaboration we may receive!
Marc Gyssens
International Meteor Organization
--
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
It SHOULD be visible from Europe...
;(
But!
Looking at the current infrared satellite images (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/pub/s at-images/D2.JPG) it's not looking good...
The sky is way too cloudy... too bad
Maybe England, Spain or France has some chance.
make $1,000,000 a year;
have at least 5 Playboy playmates after my body at all times;
have raised my IQ to the viscinity of 250;
can eat a dozen donuts at every meal and stay slim.
I hope to catch the Leonids this year, and if I do, I'll wish that I:
get rid of all that money that attracts unwanted friends;
stop going out with these superficial bimbos with silicone implants;
get a little dumber, because worrying about special groups of non-linear differential equations as applied to a parametrised space-time tensor is no fun.
I'll keep the fat-free donut rampage capacity, though!
"The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays."
I basically was getting out of work, looked up and saw this huge greenish fireball. it then seemed to split into 3 parts leaving a long trail behind it and was heading towards lake michigan. It took around 30 seconds to pass over me and out of sight. I was like 'whoa' and then heard people on a local radio station getting calls about it. It was really cool.
Good news is that I think I could live with that image as my memory of the meteor shower, so that means I can actually get some sleep tonight!
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
They also have a story saying the viewing prospects are good.
Damn, I submited this tuesday and it has been rejected... Seems like Jamie stoole my post ;-) anyways, here is a link to a Java applet that can estimate your peek view: http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/estimator.html
No, and you shouldn't either. This particular meteor storm has recurred every year, with peaks every 33 years. The last peak was 1966, and was by all accounts spectactular.
If you're worried about the conjunction of this with the turn of the millenium, you should relax on this as well. The christian counting of years was calculated by Dennis the Short, in the mid 500s at the direction of the Pope. He worked off of events of the time that modern bible scholars and historians now know were inaccurate. The best calculations show that the birth of Jesus was 4 years earlier than Dennis calculated. Thus, the millenium really turned in 1996. You missed it.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Took the trash out and looked up and there was a fireball that was just a bit dimmer than the moon. It was in the North sky and its tail stretched longer than my house is wide - in my field of view, that is. It was very blazing and lasted a long time. Neatest celestial event I've seen since those impacts with Jupiter (? I think) a few years back. COOOL!
Go Purdue!
Of course, if your locale is swaddled in clouds, you're SOL. Try again Thursday....or next year, or 2001, both of which should be as good or better.
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
There are some wonderful websites already up discussing the shower (possible storm)
See http://www.leonidslive.com for NASA's webcast and frequently updated meteor counts. BTW- there are some great tips on observing at this site, plus a number of star charts and data sheets, should you want to submit your observations.
Two other sites that I like are http://www.leonidstorm.com and http://www.space.com
Maybe we'll get lucky this year. Next year it looks like the Moons phase and location is going to really hamper any observations.
In illa quae ultra sunt
"is supposed to be between 11 PM and 1 AM (EST?)"
As I read the articles, the peak is expected to be EARLIER than that time, but below the horizon. The point in the sky that these radiate from rises about 11 PM local time, and the moon sets about 1 AM providing better contrast in a darker sky.
In the sky, the peak is 4:15 UT (GMT)(with lots of hand-waving about +/- as much as 12 hours). In North America, you need to wait till Leo rises, and perhaps till the moon sets, so you can see what's left of a waning show.
(Of course, if the sky is anything close to clear (ie not actually raining), I'll be out in the nearest open and away from lights area hoping for a show!)
The Upside to that is, of course, that I don't have to worry about it being cold outside. I don't even need a jacket at night yet!
Got HTML? Want LaTeX? Try html2latex
"Local time" means you can ignore time zones - when it's 12:30am wherever you happen to be will be the best time for you.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
The fireball was bright not so much because of size as because it was an Earth-grazer. It wasn't like normal Leonid debris where the Earth basically slams into a cloud of tiny pebbles (think of driving through a bunch of no-see-ums); this was something that was travelling roughly in Earth's orbit and slowly grazed along the upper reaches of the atmosphere. It was in the far North, which suggests a slower planetary rotation time, as well.
Bolides like this don't always break up, either. There was one a year or two ago (in the Southwest?) that was seen by thousands of people during daylight, but the trace it left suggested that it passed through and then left our atmosphere again.
Space junk is usually travelling pretty fast (90 minute orbit, compared with 24 hrs for the ground just a couple hundred miles below). We know about the big space junk (Cheyenne Mountain keeps close track of it); this doesn't sound much like a satellite orbit to me. It's possible, though.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
And this is another example of a discussion which should be in a SlashdotTalk discussion page, if there were one for us to discuss /. in...