Meteor Showers

Nick Davison writes: "This weekend promises another good meteor display with the Perseids expected to be falling at up to one a minute at around 6am PST Sunday morning. The big show of the year, however, is expected to be the Leonids that peak November 18th - they are expected to briefly peak at around 15,000/hour."

The light pollution map

[codetalker]

This is a great oppurtunity to make use of that light pollution map that was just posted a couple articles ago [slashdot.org] It's a damn shame that my part o' the map is a big bright white spot. I guess I won't be seeing to many meteors. However, the beautiful colours of all the light bouncing off the pollution in my highly developed area might just make up for it!

Re:6am PST?

[Skynet]

Ahhhh! Fuck the lameness filter!

6AM PST equals 2PM GMT

Benn there ... done that

[Pat__]

I was out watching the shower with a couple of friends and we did have a nice display.

I don't know when exatly the peak was but we only had a chance before the moon rise (from ten till around midnight local time) and we were not disapointed. frenquency was about a star every couple of minutes, including about 15 with high magnitude and long trails :)

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 perseus
- Do NOT concentrate at the spot where they will come from (Perseus) rather about 40 degrees away, as odd as this may seem, the shooting stars around perseus won't leave a long trail (they will be coming towards you ) and you won't be seing much of them.

PS the geeks that we are had to take a laptop to the middle of nowhere with Starry Night on it , as if the real sky was just not enough ;)

http://www.starrynight.com/

Re:How can I see these?

[aonifer]

Step 1: Go outside.
Step 2: Look up.

Seriously, you don't want to use binoculars. The meteors come from all over the sky. Just get a comfortable reclining lawn chair and look up. Make sure it's not cloudy and don't sit directly under a street lamp or anything. And don't expect to actually see one meteor a minute, especially if you aren't in a very dark location or are going out before midnight.

space.com slashdotted... new link

[mickey knox]

Space.com's link for the Perseid meteor shower information has officially been slashdotted.

You can view similar information (or at least good information on the annual Perseid meteor showers) on nasa.gov [nasa.gov]. Yummy tasty.

Leonid stream details

[mgarraha]

Why should the 2001 Leonids be special?

David Asher at Armagh Observatory has an explanation and plots [arm.ac.uk] that answer my question. He and Robert McNaught in Australia have calculated the orbits of debris streams ejected during many past apparitions of the comet. The outer planets perturb each stream differently. In 2001 Australia and Asia should get 15000 meteors per hour from the combined 1866 and 1699 streams. The Americas should get 2500 per hour from the 1767 stream. The 1966 storm was a direct hit on the relatively fresh 1899 stream. They think the numerous bright Leonids seen in 1998 may have been ejected in 1333.

The International Dark-Sky Association

[SteveM]

What happened to the anti-light pollution movement?

They are here. [darksky.org].

Steve M