First-hand Account Of The Leonid Shower 39
chongo writes: "The Leonid meteor shower certainly lived up to its hype
this year. At Fremont Peak, CA (USA) we saw a peak rate of
2408 meteors/hour. We saw many bright fireballs.
During the peak (18 Nov 2001 1015-1130 UTC) there were
frequent instances where multiple meteors were visible.
Because of this, we suspect the true rate was likely higher
than 2500/hr." We've also heard from several folks who were foiled by weather, but it's good that at least some people got the full show. Update: 11/18 17:09 GMT by T : BrianGa writes: "If you missed the show, like I
did, you can see some
still pictures and animated pictures." He also points to a site with a preliminary graph of the number of meteors visible on November 18th.
Pretty in Seattle, but not busy. (Score:2, Interesting)
Most of those we did see were near the zenith and left fairly long (10 degrees), spectacular trails. Based on what I've read elsewhere this was probably the leading edge of the storm. Even missing the peak, it was beautiful and worth the cold and the wait.
Too foggy in Pgh (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Too foggy in Pgh (Score:1)
Re:Too foggy in Pgh (Score:1)
Pretty nice show (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pretty nice show (Score:1)
Boston Massachusetts USA: Impresssive (Score:4, Interesting)
Impressive
Oftentimes multiple tracks visible at once. Very "bursty" activity with gaps of 5 - 30 seconds between sightings, then often several together or in the same part of the sky separated by moments. About one really bright one a minute.
Paths were often at angles to the horizon, once or twice almost oblique. The paths themselves were also often quite prominant being very bright themselves and lasting up to a few degrees behind the meteorite and lingering for a second or two in some cases.
The most astonishing thing was if one laid back as so that the zenith was centered and nothing but sky was in the field of vision there was an almost constant sparkle of *something*. I've done and taught astronomy before but I've never sen this much activity at once - even from this relatively crappy location it was obvious something dramatic was going on overhead.
I'll not attempt to offer counts or speculate on the rate as I was in a lousy location, they're hard estimates to make accurately and frankly I didn't care. It was a deeply impressive sight and I'm thrilled to have witnessed it. In a single hour of viewing I likely saw as many meteorites as I've seen in my life before, never so many multiples at once.
At one point it was like popcorn popping: "Look there... Oh!.. Oh!.. Down!.. Over!.. Uhhhhhhh THERE!"
Re:Boston Massachusetts USA: Impresssive (Score:2)
It was still spectacular tho. At about 1am, I saw a couple of spectacular fireballs close to the horizon. A couple of little ones here and there. Went back out from 4:30 to 5:30 and there was at least 1-2 a minute visible, and bursts of up to 10-15 per minute. I really was beautiful. Smoke trails were clearly visible for the larger ones. We even saw one that left no trail really, but seemed to be just a greenish explosion in the middle of the sky. Amazing.
I'll definately be renting a car and going upstate for the next big shower that comes along.
Even my students were impressed (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't begin to estimate the peak rate, as I was jumping between staring at the sky and moving telescopes to various planets and nebulae. But when I had time to look east at Leo, I could see at least one meteor ever few seconds (which correspords to at least 1000/hour). Oddly, while the number of meteors/per time was highest to the east, near the radiant, the quality of the meteors was best looking near zeinth or even westward. Many of the meteors in that section of the sky were brighter, bigger and left trails that persisted for tens of seconds. That, and the mountains made a splendid background.
I had one vistor claim to have seen color in a particularly bright meteor, but I was looking in the opposite direction at the time. Which brings up the old lightening-spotting effect: whenever someone says, "Oooh, pretty one!" everyone else looks in that direction, despite it being too late. There is some sort of poor conditioning going on there, but I'll leave that to psychologists.
In any event, if you didn't see these you either were unlucky or you should have gotten up for this. Either way, be ready for next time!
Re:Even my students were impressed (Score:2, Interesting)
Unfortunately, many other people had the idea to come out on the golf course, so there was an excess of idiot noise, as well as several pricks playing with their flashlights. Still, the show was very impressive, especially considering that during my entire life I've seen no more than two other meteors before tonight...
Re: Color (Score:3, Interesting)
My vantage point was Kerr Lake, NC. I went camping with some friends and we took a home-made dobsonian telescope to stargaze with prior to the shower. The conditions were about perfect. The sky was clear, there was very little light pollution, it was dry, windless, and actually pretty warm for mid-November.
I dont really know how to gauge the rate, but at the peak (5:30-ish EST?) I was seeing meteors about once every second with bursts of 6-7. It was hard to catch them all as they would appear in nearly every quadrant of the sky. After about the first few minutes I had already seen more meteors than I had seen in my entire life previously, so it was well worth the trip.
/joeyo
Re: Color (Score:2)
Eric
Re:Even my students were impressed (Score:1)
North Wallace, Nova Scotia, Canada: (Score:3, Interesting)
Dude! (Score:3, Interesting)
What was especially fun was that it was so dark in the hills you couldn't tell if anyone else was there, until a fireball streaked across the sky and a hundred voices from the mountain said "oooooooh".
Blasted college work (Score:1)
Innnnn-credibe (South Florida) (Score:3, Informative)
All in all, an incredible experience, it was cloudy only to the east (sometimes lit from behind), so there were tons of long streaks visible (at the same time, different colors, different speeds and different entry angles (not straight out from a central point)). I saw no exploding or splitting bolides, but lots of very persistant dust trails - as the sun was about to rise, they all lit up, and the sky was crisscrossed with them. It was very subtle, but really really nice.
--
Evan
Brooklyn, New York (Score:3, Informative)
I've only seen meteors twice before, and they were nothing like this. It was quite a show. We saw quite a few of the big ones that left a "snail-trail" that could be seen even if you missed the initial flash. There were several multiples, too.
South Florida had it's share (Score:2, Informative)
They had a strict no-light policy while running exposures, so you would hear "OK, apertures open", and "apertures closed". (lol)
At first I was disappointed, because it didn't seem any better than last year, but then we started getting bursts of activity, I think at one time I saw as many as 4 or 5 trails in the sky at once, and that was just looking at one quadrant.
The coolest thing was seeing trails that didn't disappear for up to a minute or two, until they started losing shape, drifting in the wind. (wind was almost nil, which was great for photography)
We found it didn't matter which way we pointed cameras, because any direction you looked, you were bound to see one in a few seconds.
I believe I saw at least one meteorite that burst into multiple pieces, before winking out.
We kept on seeing this level of activity until the sun started to rise. From listening to my friends, and my own sightings, it seemed one of us saw something every 2 or 3 seconds, on average.
Even though I have never seen this kind of volume before, they were all small. Didn't see one that fell all the way to earth. (Back in '91 in Canada, I saw one that broke up in several pieces and fell all the way down behind an island)
Didn't see a damn thing (Score:2)
East Central Mississippi (Score:2)
Right before we left at 5:00 CST, we both looked over at the constellation Orion. One came in from over the top of his back shoulder and right above the first star of his belt, it split into about 4 pieces. That one made our night, seeing Orion getting a shot in the gut. Also, several times, we would be facing north, and then a bright flash would be in the south, bright enough to have us swing around real fast. It was quite amazing.
Fantastic in Charleston SC (Score:2)
Jupiter and the Andromeda galaxy also provided some nice viewing while we were waiting for the main show to start.
Bad luck in Monterrey, Mexico (Score:2)
Back in... '98, I think, the weather was great, and me and several friends drove out to a ranch an hour away from Monterrey, and we saw a great show, too. Nothing like this one, I imagine, but still it was pretty cool. I think we saw about 100 meteors / hour, some with beautiful colorful trails that lasted for several seconds (including one with a green trail that lasted almost a full minute).
Well, I hope I'll be able to see it next time around, which'll be about... 2040 or somewhen close. Soudns like a great thing to do with any future grandchildren I may (or may not) have.
Great Show in Apia, Samoa (Score:2)
I saw the first meteor while getting out of the car. It was simply stunning, a long streak of light with a glowing trail. It was one of the best I'd ever seen. Little did I know then that I would see over two thousand of them in the next three hours.
In fact, we would have seen more if we had been able to watch both halves of the sky at once.
It was easy to see the meteors radiating outward from Leo, and the sense of scale that gave me was simply amazing.
The best one we saw was intensely bright, brighter than Venus at its brightest, red, and right overhead. Bits were literally exploding off it as we watched. It traversed at least an eighth of the sky before exploding, leaving a quickly-fading orange trail and a slow-fading green plasma cloud.
It certainly made up for the 1998 Leonids, which were obscured by a gargantuan thunderstorm for me near Canberra. Although the fact that I was ensconced in the back of my station wagon, on a mattress, under a sleeping bag, with my girlfriend did make it easier to pass the time.
Allentown PA - Lovely Show (Score:2)
We started about observing about 2 AM EST - and in between seeing the sights of the sky we were counting something on the order of about 50-70 Leonids per hour.
At 3:45 AM things started to get truly lovely, so we set ourselves up in the lawn chairs and started counting rates for a minute at a time every 5 minutes or so. Viewing was okay - given the relatively urban setting - with seeing down to about 4.5 Mag and calm atmosphere and high humidity. We counted rates increasing from around 2-3 a minute to about 14 a minute getting close to 4:30 AM.
At 4:45 AM we had high clouds start to scud across the sky, and I gave up formal counting since there would be no normalize the numbers. At our peak around 5:30 AM or so, we were seeing a couple of bright Leonids a minute, some so bright that they lit up the domes like a lightning flash, as well as many (~.25-.5/second) smaller Leonids. We saw a number of truly lovely simultaneous events. The best part was that two or three atmospheric skipping meteors were seen as well.
People from the surrounding area started joining us about 4 AM and we probably had something like 70 people or so up there just before dawn. It was like watching the fireworks on the Mall in DC on the 4th of July with people Ooohing and Ahhhing, and occasionally cheering. My students fanned out in the crowd and I heard them explaining what we were seeing to the new arrivals, and showing them around the sky.
We didn't get to see the full effect of the storm because of the high clouds, but the spectacular fireballs, and the mood of the crowd made in a once in a lifetime event for me. Truly superb!
Cursed Fog! (Score:2)
On a side note, any train running near you in a fog sounds like it's coming *right for you*
Mid-North of South Australia - Perfect. (Score:2)
This was definitely something I'm glad I saw. Other people have written great descriptions of what the shower looked like, but nothing compared to the feeling of actually being there, watching the sky being traced with trails of light. One really impressively bright meteorite left a trail that persisted for almost half a minute!
My Grandfather was there too, and he'd seen the 1933 show - which he thought had been better, but then he didn't stay for long (cold!!).
The predicted peaks were sort of noticable, in that there was a definite increase and then gradual decrease in the number coming in, but there really wasn't more than a minute in the whole time where none were visible.
My dad took a few long exposure photos, which will be a nice reminder. If you missed it this time, make sure you're in a good spot in 2034 for the next really good show - it's well worth it...
I think I'll be trying for the Nullarbor Plains, myself.
From Skyline Drive in Virginia (Score:1)
Long and bright, short and bright, dim and short, exploding flashers, point source flashers, long ones that changed brightness as they skipped along, it was quite the show. Beat the 1998 show by quite a bit, if not because it lasted for four+ hours instead of the 45 minute tease we got in '98. Still not 100,000 per hour, though [:-)]
Before the main part of the show started, showed about 50 people M-42 and Saturn through my 20-inch dobsonian [ladyandtramp.com], many of which had never looked through a telescope before. Had spent the hours between 10pm and 2am chasing down some faint galaxies.
The overlook was gridlocked with cars by 4:30. By 5:30, cars were parked on both sides of Skyline drive and perhaps 500 people were at the overlook. Even as twilight overtook the sky, you could see bright meteors flashing across the western sky. Many stayed to watch sunrise over solid clouds as far as the eye could see.
Satellite sightings?? in Athens, GA (Score:1)
around 5:00am we saw a pinprick of light move steadily (and rapidly) across the sky, at times growing quite bright, then fading again, but moving with constant velocity and completely traversing our field of view. This happened 2 more times over the next half-hour or so. Though none of us had seen such before, we suspected we were seeing satellites (perhaps the same one?). The lack of multi-colored lights and the small size ruled out the possibility of a plane, and we reasoned that the varying intensity of this pinprick could be attributed to a satellite's solar arrays reflecting varying amounts of sunlight in our direction.
Did anyone else see these? Any explanations/comments?
Re:Satellite sightings?? in Athens, GA (Score:1)
Re:Satellite sightings?? in Athens, GA (Score:1)
raw Leonid counts from Fremont Peak (Score:1)
There were many and frequent bright fireballs. During the peak of the storm (1015-1130 UTC), the sky was frequently filled with multiple meteors! Wow!
Green trail to meteor ? (Score:1)
Foster City, CA (Score:1)
There was a point they radiated from. If I looked there, instead of seeing long streaks, I saw bright spots that moved slightly then died out (rocks shooting straight at us). Scary.
Many bright ones left trails for 5-10 seconds. One had a path that wasn't straight, it veered left about 1 degree at one point. I didn't notice any color in any of them. They didn't all radiate from the same point, some seemed to be going at large angles to the rest of them.
My daughter said they were rocks falling from the sky, and catching fire, and they were brown and looked like big balls and they went really fast. We had trouble coaxing her outside because there were rocks falling from the sky.
Nobody else in suburbia was out watching it. Several coworkers drove out to Pescadaro Beach and saw a good show. Good for them!
east of Albuquerque, New Mexico (Score:2)
Despite partial cloudiness, we got up at 0230 MST to venture a few miles out onto the eastern plains, away from the light pollution from Abq.
It was worth it, despite the cold weather!
Like the other poster said - I saw more meteors in the first few minutes than in all my life up to that point.
Put the futon into the back of the pick-up truck so we wouldn't crick our necks.
Saw bursts of several in as many seconds, with intervals of no activity for no more than 20 seconds at a time.
Two or three were pretty spectacular and bright, but not discernable as fireballs by my admittedly poor eyesight.
About 2 or 3 years ago on a summer evening about 11pm MDT driving back from the city my wife saw a fireball - I thought it was lightning because of the flash, but then noticed there weren't any clouds!
I'm still hoping to experience a total eclipse one of these years. I presume I'll have to venture away from North America to see it?
Even in the heart of New York (Score:1)
Shootin in San Jose (Score:1)
My wife and two friends left from our house around 11. We got up to the ranch, got out the burn barel (50 gallon oil drum with bullet holes) My other friends started to trickle in 15 minutes after we got up there.
There was two small boys with us, they had never been on private property before. They had a blast. In between watching meteors we would make them go fetch more pine cones for the fire.
We saw one meteor actually split and make a Y in the sky. Around 2:00am things really started to pick up. The meteors began falling in both series and parrelel, usually 5 at a time.
We forgot to bring beer