Leonids

[neubjr]

I think most people probably know about this, but just to be sure:

Leonids meteor shower maximum is over Northeastern united states this year. So we'll get a really good show here at least. It peaks something like 4:30am EST Tuesday November 19th. And it will undoubtably be an excellent show.

If anyone catches any good pictures of it, it'd be great to see those if you feel like posting them. I know there's still a few weeks to go, but everyone should make plans to get out of a city if you're in one, and check out the leonids for a night.

Joshua.

[Ric]

Here is the report from our Leonids expedition.

We drove about 1 hour north of Phoenix on I17 and then drove for about .5 hour on a Jeep trail into the Tonto National Forest. This got us some really clear, dark skies.

I only took data for about 1 hour during the peak of the storm. We were getting cold and wanted to make it back into town for work on Tuesday, so we left when things started to trail off around 4:15am.

The peak was between 3:30am and 3:45am. No really fantastic, huge meteors were visible, but a great quantity of smaller ones generating short streaks made up the bulk.

At the peak of the storm we counted 80 meteors in a single 15 minute period. Thats about 5 per minute! They seemed to come in groups of 3 to 5 within a few seconds of each other.

I used the Meteor Counting and Observation Program for my PDA to collect this data: http://science.nasa.gov/spaceweather/leonids/mcopv0.9.zip

You can see the date, time and number of meteors in each 15 minute period. I'm not sure what the last number is, the software stuck it in there.

MCOP 15 Min Count 11/19/02
lm= Full Moon
sky= clear
notes= Alt. 3753 ASL
shower = Leonids
shower ra = 153.00
shower_dec = 22.00
population index = 2.50
observer lat = N34.230
observer long = W112.010

DATE TIME #Sighted
11/19/02 01:29 Begin observation
11/19/02 01:48 10 6214.82
11/19/02 01:48 End Observation
11/19/02 01:50 Begin observation
11/19/02 03:00 28 5531.42
11/19/02 03:15 19 21381.71
11/19/02 03:30 37 45420.65
11/19/02 03:45 80 108400.38
11/19/02 04:00 52 78826.28
11/19/02 04:08 14 43781.97
11/19/02 04:08 End Observation
11/19/02 04:10 Begin observation
11/19/02 04:15 14 75764.92
11/19/02 04:18 1 9383.99
11/19/02 04:18 End Observation

[smiley]

A couple hundred miles south of Ric, near the Arizona/Mexico border, and things were mostly the same. We didn't keep an official tally, but the highest rate we saw was about 1 every few seconds on average. There was one moment shortly after 3:30 when I saw 6 within the span of a few seconds, all shooting from the radiant. Things tapered off quickly, though while driving home in the early morning I saw a few very bright ones on the horizon.

Here are some Leonid pictures (http://guymcarthur.com/personal/images/leonids/) from the occasion.

[usagi]

I wasn't able to see anything but I went out at about 12:30am and I had school later.

[byen00]

I think most people probably know about this, but just to be sure:

Leonids meteor shower maximum is over Northeastern united states this year. So we'll get a really good show here at least. It peaks something like 4:30am EST Tuesday November 19th. And it will undoubtably be an excellent show.

If anyone catches any good pictures of it, it'd be great to see those if you feel like posting them. I know there's still a few weeks to go, but everyone should make plans to get out of a city if you're in one, and check out the leonids for a night.

Joshua.

I was just south of Mt. Pinos (a well known observing site for S. California amateurs), at Hungry Valley:

http://www.comet-track.com/meteor/leonids03/leonids03.html

I actually got one frame which had a Taurid (still active during the Leonids) & Leonid. I actually saw it visually, so that made my photo-trip worthwhile.

The media coverage (incl spaceweather.com) labelled the '03 Leonids for the USA as a dud, but I *did* see meteor activity. It really picked up in the AM hrs towards sunrise..you could see meteors near Orion (see the 35mm lens shot above), Taurus. As the radiant got higher, there were a lot of meteors near the horizon, which is typical behavior.

I ran 3 meteor-patrol mounts (all tracking the stars, 2 cameras per mount), with 6 35mm cameras: 3 fisheye lenses & 3 w/standard lenses (35mm, 50mm,
50mm). The latter 3.. I would selectively "roam", depending on observed meteor activity. Activity was sparse early in the session & the clouds almost made me pickup & leave. That would have made the effort a waste (gas, time, 6 incomplete rolls of film), but luckily "hanging in there" proved worthwhile.

[The1nonlyhabibi]

It was i think about 1 year or 2 ago. I heard that there was going to be a leonid meteor shower around 2 am. I live in the west in the city. Through all those lights i saw the meteor shower for the first time. It was beautiful. Its a first timer for me and it was really exciting. :D