Leonids 2003

Ruger writes "This year's display isn't expected to be a spectacular as last year's, but weather permitting, people in North America should have a pretty good view of the shower. This CNN article provides some information on tonights shower. This is actually the second shower of 2003 and this NASA article gives more details about the shower as well as best viewing times around the world."

I hope it's better that the aurora

[Leroy_Brown242]

All the hype, and all I saw were stars. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Links for Time Zone

[satanami69]

Eastern Time Zone [starryskies.com]
Western Time Zone [starryskies.com]
Mountain Time Zone [starryskies.com]
Pacific Time Zone [starryskies.com]
Central Time Zone [starryskies.com]

Re:Links for Time Zone

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that this will work for everyone, but Jupiter is right next to Leo. If you can't find Jupiter, you can't find anything. Of course they radiate from Leo, so if you see one right in Leo, duck.

Re:Links for Time Zone

[isorox]

WTF is the western zone?

Re:Links for Time Zone

[barakn]

i don't know what was intended by 'western', but it's just another link to the central time zone.

Going to be cold here (Colorado)

[linuxkrn]

I sure hope it will be worth it to be up at 03:30. Going to try to grab some shots with my digital camera.

Here are a few tips for anyone else going to try:
Be sure and use a camera that you can control the shutter speed. You will need 20-30 seconds (or more) and a tripod. Aperture of 2.8 or better.

Other helpful things are to use your shot timer if you don't have a remote/shutter trigger cable. Any movement will blur the image.

If you have a wide-angle lens use it. Not only will you cover more sky but it will allow more light to enter the lens.

Re:Going to be cold here (Colorado)

[OneOver137]

What part? I'm going to be co-teaching an Astronomy class in Elbert and we'll be keeping an eye out for bolides. Seeing will be poor according the Great Sky Clock. :-(

Re:Going to be cold here (Colorado)

[linuxkrn]

Just south of Denver. However, the moon is going to wash out a lot I'm afraid. But still worth a shot for those few bright ones.

Re:Going to be cold here (Colorado)

[linuxkrn]

Sony Cybershot DSC-F717, however even the old Mavica FD91/95 has shutter control.

There are a lot of other mfgs who have that feature too. Like the Nikon Coolpix.

Don't get your hopes up...

[OneOver137]

Moon is nearly third quarter and will rise during the best viewing times washing out all but the brightest ones. Additionally, this year's shower should be regular, i.e. about 60 meteors per hour from a dark location. YMMV.

Too Bad!

[kramer2718]

I live in a Rochester, New York, a fair sized city with a lot of light pollution and heavy cloud cover. I never get to see any good Celestial events.

Showers

[FoxMcCloud]

This CNN article provides some information on tonights shower. This is actually the second shower of 2003 and this NASA article gives more details about the shower [...]

Sounds like the myth about nerds and showers wasn't exaggerated after all...

Aww.

[dtfinch]

Too bad it's cloudy here in Southern Oregon.

Moo

[Chacham]

It's almost one a day now. Stories where the title must be read to understand the story.

The editors here are getting worse and worse.

It is pouring rain here

[chloroquine]

I'm considering doing an anti-rain dance because I'd really like to see some meteors this year. Last year was fun; a friend of mine has a roof deck, so even in West Philly, we could still see some meteors. But I don't think that I'll get to see anything this year.