LOL [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img]
What a lame planet we live on! It manages to shadow everything with pea soup like clouds! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

(OK, so I'm a few days late with my "report").

AUGH! I HATE FOG!

Here in the Upper Ohio Valley, thick cold fog "rolled" in around 8pm and stayed around all night and all morning. I was bitterly disappointed. It wasn't even safe to drive to a higher, non foggy area. We had zero visibility on the roads.

SIGH

THE meteor event of my lifetime and I missed it!

CJSF

__________________
Two years ago moved from my town
I was looking up past the city lights
But the city lights got in my way

See the constellation ride across the sky
No cigar, no lady on his arm
Just a guy made of dots and lines

-from "See The Constellation"
by They Might Be Giants

By some coincidence, I was already planning to go camping this weekend on the outskirts of Houston. The timing was superb. So a group of us were in the woods camping all night Sat night. Only problem is the temps dropped into the 40s and we were plumb tuckered out from the day's activities. We had patchy clouds rolling across the sky. Went to bed about 12 - just couldn't stay up.

But I did wake up at about 5:30 needing to make a pit stop, and the sky was clear. So I stayed up for about 10 minutes watching the sky. It was pretty neat, but got too cold and I went back to bed. More of the haze was rolling across the sky at that time anyway.

My fiancee and I got up about 3:00am CST and went outside to take a look -- perfectly clear skies. After a while, we decided to drive outside of town to get away from the city lights a bit.

Saw a lot of meteors, some surprisingly bright. There were a couple where you could still see the trail a good 15 seconds later.

At about 4:30am the clouds started to roll in and so we went back home. (It was weird; we were just lying there watching the sky and talking, and all of a sudden noticed that the stars were going away! Couldn't really "see" the clouds, just noticed the absence of stars!)

All in all, though, it was a good show!

__________________
SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

This was my first meteor shower. I probably missed a lot of them, because of the light pollution/smog[I live in Houston], but I did see one explode.

My mini report: [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]
We observed from the edge of a lake surrounded by pine trees North of Sutter Creek, California. (It's a favorite spot.) Pretty good view of the sky except farther North. We were lucky here as an earlier storm just passed the day before, and newly expected rain clouds and morning fog didn't roll in yet. (Expected Monday night.)

Noticed some meteors prior to 2 a.m. but after - Wow!

We lay back on lawn chairs, bundled up and under blankets - but still cold. Estimates of type and guesses of magnitude quickly deteriorated into just "Ooos and Ahhhs" like a fireworks show.

I estimate the average was 30 a minute with peaks of 80 a minute and gulfs of several minutes with no meteors.

Many seemed to be moving basically East to West across our sky. Some were bright "bluish" while a few appeared "pinkish." Some were tiny thin short streaks while others were wider and longer, and very bright. All were speedy! Flash and gone! Two seemed to go down to the S/W horizon. I saw several pairs flying in side-by-side, and one triplet! Saw several streak through Taurus "near" Saturn. Around 2:35 local time we saw a BIG meteor "explode" slightly "South" of Sirius. It's cloud hung in the air and seemed to glow slightly. It's trail soon drifted into a big question mark shape by (I suppose) winds in the upper atmosphere.

It was really uncanny how the shower picked up as predicted just after 2 a.m. nobody in our group of eight actually saw it directly, but one apparently ended in a very bright flash North of us. (Behind where we were looking, but still in the sky.) It was like lightning (though no sound). That was the brightest.

We finally got too cold about 3:30 and had to go in. I peaked out the window and saw two more. A bedtime treat. Wanted to get up before dawn but woke up closer to noon! (Whoops!) But it was fabulous! I’m still in awe.

Chip


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Chip on 2001-11-20 11:25 ]</font>

Ok, in Santa Barbara we had nasty marine layer fog, but we drove up into the hills until we were in the clear, and it was really good. Kinda chilly (40 F, nothing like other places, but it's cold for here [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] ) but clear. I wasn't counting, but they definately came in fits and starts. At one point there were 3 simultaneous streaks, which was good also.

Also, it seemed like most of them went from se to nw, but there were many going perpendicular, is this just random or is there a method to it?

Ben Benoy

What a disapointment!!!!!!!! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_frown.gif[/img] Around here it gets foggy once every 5 years. Guess which night was the appointed one this time! We couldn't see the street from our house let alone the sky. I tried phoning around to see if it was a localized thing. Of course, it wasn't. I note by Zanderman's post that it was foggy by him too. He's on the far side of town from me.

We tried driving to the top of a local hill. I do not recomend driving by Braille. (feeling your way along) I nearly hit a parked car. The only thing we saw was that the fog was thicker up there (if such a thing is possible).

(steps from soap box, looks for somewhere else to whine)

__________________
It's just one of those damn things of which there are many few. -- Dan Blocker

At 1:00 AM it was cloudy, but by three it was absolutely clear. I think all the clouds moved onto to Ohio. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

We saw about a hundred in a half hour, 3:00 - 3:30. Except for lights of Boulder, it was perfect viewing.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Wiley on 2001-11-19 16:44 ]</font>

Hey! So you're the guy that inflicted all of that fog on us!

Interesting that you live in the Peoples Republic of Boulder? [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] I used to live down on the south side of Denver off of County Line Rd. in unincorporated Loveland. Beautiful country, great skiing, taxes up the gazoooo. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img] It's cheaper for me to live in Ohio and only visit out there. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

__________________
It's just one of those damn things of which there are many few. -- Dan Blocker

Gee thanks, Wiley...I'll remember you in 2099!

Where was this weather 48 hours ago? [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_confused.gif[/img]
Got home about 5:00 CST and looked at the sky. A front blew through yesterday. Left the air remarkably clear and steady. Not only was there very little scintillation (twinkle), but M44 (The Beehive) in Cancer was visable to direct vision. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_eek.gif[/img] But, no meteors (in the 10 minutes I was able to stand the 45 degree F in a T-shirt). Bummer! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_frown.gif[/img]

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

I'm still seeing great displays! Last night I saw a big big ball crossing the sky west-east. I'm in southern hemisphere right over the Capricorn tropic, atop a 1000 meter high hill. It was 00:15 AM local time and the sky were perfectly clear, after several days of late spring showers. The meteor presented a reddish colour and wasn't too fast. It gently crossed the sky, leaving a fragmented trail. A vision to be remembered.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Argos on 2001-11-20 07:22 ]</font>

That doesn't sound like a Leonid to me. At midnight, Leo would still be far in the east, so any Leonids you saw would have been going from east to west. Also, the Leonids have all been reported to be very fast and bright, glowing yellow, white, or blue.

Sounds more like a really nice sporadic meteor to me. Lucky dog.

PS: Argos, where are you actually? South America? Australia? If Australia, what did you see Sunday night? I'd like to compare it with my own observations if possible.

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

Well, if you look at the very first post, The Bad Astronomer's post, there is this:

Maybe we should ask him!

On a cloudless night soaking in a hot tub in Western Washington I stayed up with four friends watching meteor after meteor. It has to have been one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. I could not believe how bright some of them were. All I can really say is thank you weather gods for the rare cloudless weekend over in Gig Harbor WA.

Thought I'd throw my 2 cents in on the Leonids:

We were coming home from a Symphony concert Saturday and the skies were mostly cloudy, so we decided not to get up. However, at about 3:20 am MST, I woke up with a headache (too many Margaritas with dinner,I guess) and got up to get a pain reliever. I peeked out of the upstairs bathroom window in time to see a splendid crystal clear sky and a HUGE Leonid meterorite streaking toward Taurus.

Well,that settled it - we went out on the back deck in our winter coats and pj's and saw Leonids of quite a few different magnitudes (including some so bright they were reflected in the windows of our house). My guess - if we had stayed out a full hour, we would have seen at least 100-150 from our suburban backyard. Really cool (and my headache went away,too)!

rubysue (tired of politics for the time being)

Randy:

I thought the meteor site was cool, also. One of my friends in my wonderful astronomy club sent it to the membership. It somewhat saved everything.

I am glad that I have a broad interest in physics/astronomy/astrophysics/cosmology which can take over when the weather up here is dreary. However, Michigan is a Winter and Summer playpen, so if one can brave the snow and the clouds, there is plenty to do at such other times when viewing is temporarily out. Then, there are computers to play with, too.

I always take the positive side of things and have a lot of varied interests which keep anything from ruining my day/night for very long.

I think belonging to a great astronomy club (such as mine) is important. Everybody should have one. The members can cry on each others shoulders when the weather is foul.

ljbrs [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

I'm in Brazil, David. 50 degrees longitude west, 22.5 degrees latitude south, in the neighborhood of a beautiful city called Bauru. Unfortunately I was unable to see the stars on Sunday, in account of bad weather. It only cleared out on Monday morning. The region where I am is entering the rainy season, that will last til March. So, I was really lucky on Monday night. If you want some additional report on the things over here, I'll be glad to deliver.

As to the reddish meteor I saw, I guess you are right. It must have been an isolated event.

Thanks Argos. I had a feeling it was SA from your name and the way you wrote. oh, well. Any Aussies or other Asians want to chime in?

Sorry to hear about the cloudy skies. At least you can see you weren't alone. I've had similar things like this happen to me before too, especially for the 1998 Leonids.

And from your description I'd think that cool red meteor would almost make up for missing out on the peak. At least it's a great consolation prize. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

One of my greatest wishes is to someday get to the southern hemisphere and have someone really knowledgable show me around the skies there. But wait, I'd want to see the WHOLE sky, so it looks like I'll have to go twice, once in summer and again in winter. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

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...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

There was dense fog in Michigan. I simply did other things, because crying about it only makes one more depressed. I think it is important to have a large list of things one can do when astronomical viewing is impossible. In this way, one is never disturbed by the weather. I live in Michigan where it is important to wear at least two hats: Amateur Astronomer and Amateur Meteorologist. Of course, the more diverse hats, the better. As long as one is always learning something new, nothing is really lost. Just go to PLAN B (or PLAN C, PLAN D, PLAN E, ad infinitum).

ljbrs [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

My friend, when the skies get clear (mostly from March to November)it is really wonderful. Last night the sky was crystal clear (a break in the looming rainy season), with some of the most beautiful features of the southern skies parading before me. There was Sigma Octantis, Orion in great shape, the Pleiades (I was able to spot nine stars with unaided eyes!)*, and, last but not least, two faint, fast moving meteors. This time of year, the shy constelations of Cetus, Eridanus and Sculptor dominate the sky at midnight, along with Piscis Australis, with the powerful Fomalhaut (Alpha Piscis Austrini). A good thing here is that you can have the best of both halves of the sky. I can have a pretty good sight of the northern sky while the southern (approximate) polar star is twinkling up well above the horizon.

I'd like to see again the northern skies from, say, 50 deg N, just as you'd like to see the southern. There are times when I travel to the North of Brazil on vacations (2000 miles from where I live - a paradise!) close to the Equator, and I see the Big Dipper over the horizon. I use to spend hours watching it. I'd like to see it in all its glory, at the zenith. I hope someday...

If you ever come to Brazil, let me know. You could visit me in my ranch. I'll be your guide to the southern skies.

(*)Except for my looking-glass








<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Argos on 2001-11-22 10:22 ]</font>

And you didn't head up the canyon? I at least have an excuse - I had to work.

__________________
Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.
~Aristotle

Look, I live in Michigan (the cloudy, misty, rainy, snowy state) and I do not want to hear anything about the fabulous Leonids. So there! Take that! And that! And that!

I did other things which are permitted for Michiganian amateur astronomers: Sleep, sleep, and more sleep.

ljbrs [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

RMallon suggested:

"Torsten, hope you'll post some of your Leonid time exposures for us!"

Well, as I feared, even though we were a few kilometres out of town, there was too much haze and too much of the town's light reflecting off of it. The long exposures are quite washed out. The first one I took shows only Jupiter. Of the 6 images, the last three show recognizable constellations of trailed stars in a grey sky, but no meteor streaks. There was significant vignetting as well, with the centres of the photos being brighter than the edges. One of the pictures shows Orion on the bottom with Jupiter and Saturn on either side above, and the Hyades and Pleiades as well. Another is a view somewhat higher, with Jupiter and Saturn at the bottom of the image and Auriga above. None, however, are very good.

But now I have a few ideas for next time! I think I'll try to first take some constellation portraits with the 50 mm lens, using shorter exposures. And I'll be rigourous about bracketing the exposures and recording the times, so that I can learn what works. I may even try to make a piggy-back bracket for my ETX and see if I can minimize the star trails (again, not expecting much success here -- the drive was not designed for this sort of thing).

The funny thing is, though I have taken some solar images (including a partial eclipse from last year) I've always hesitated to take these sorts of photos, fearing that I'd be wasting film. That was a really dumb attitude to have. As it turns out, it was quite easy and very satisfying to take these pictures, even with the relatively poor results I got.

So I will try it again. And maybe I'll have something worth posting.

Argos, thank you for your wonderful offer. I wish I could take you up on it. It doesn't look like I'll be getting to South America very soon though. I'm about as far from you as I can get and still be on the same planet. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

I hope you get the chance to see the north just as I wish to see the south. But your situation already sounds wonderful to me (except for the nasty rainy-season description). It sounds to me like you've already seen most of it. From the U.S. and Japan you can't see much further south than Orion. Light pollution is also becoming a very serious problem, and it's hard to find very dark skies except in the far west of the USA, and even then you have to travel an hour outside of any major city.

Japan is even worse in many ways, but I've also found it better in some ways also. Up in the mountains away from the major cities it can be beautiful, and I think there's something about the types of lights used here or the atmospherics which seem to make sky glow less green and washed out than I remember from back home. But the big problem is finding a site that doesn't have a lot of local lighting to interfere with you're vision. Since I don't have any personal transportation, it's very difficult for me to get out to any decent sites.

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

i saw leonid shower in india...it was a feast to the eyes on nov.19 4 am ist.

Light pollution is also becoming a very serious problem (...)
Japan is even worse in many ways(...)

Indeed my friend. In night satellite pictures you can see Japan's map perfectly outlined. I live in a very dense urban region, but nothing that compares to your case. The problem is that the situation is getting worse, worldwide. A real shame.

I observed the Leonids from the Steve Kufeld Astronomical Site (the site owned by the Los Angeles Astronomical Society). It is located in Lockwood Valley, Ventura County, about 80 miles NW of the Los Angeles basin, and a but SE of Mt. Pinos. For the last several years of Leonid watching, the overnight low temperature was about 25F. This time around we stopped watching the thermometer after it fell to 19F. I am quite certain that it got still colder (the digital thermometer frosted over anyway), and figure it was about 15F much of the night. It was uncomfortably cold, which does impact meteor viewing.

Nevertheless, it was a good show. We had Jack Popejoy with us, a senior reporter for KFWB news radio, and fairly well known as the local radio earthquake expert in L.A. He also happens to have a B.A. in Astronomy, of all things. he countred 800 meteors during the peak hour. We had a community college class visiting, and one of those students counted to about 475 when he gave up. One other counter claimed 1000 during the same hour. I didn't count myself, but it's clear that we had a good turnout of meteors, whether it was really 800 or really 1000. I don't think the counts were as methodical as they could have been.

There were a few bright Taurids, and a few weird interlopers. One early in the evening, barely after sunset, was the biggest and brightest of the night, streaking slowly over the southern horizon. It could have been a Taurid, or at least that's more likely than a Leonid. But late there was a slow poke that walked along the northern horizon just above the hill tops. There were three really bright flash bulb exploders, and I missed them all! One went off behind me, and the two that were in front of me were both behind either of the only two trees that could block anything. There were quite a few midget meteors, or so I thought. I also noticed several in-yer-face meteors out of Leo with no discernable train at all, just little flash bulbs.

The only thing I found disappointing was the the 1998 Leonids produced more of the really long lasting trains, that I could watch in binoculars for 10 or 15 minutes. There were some of those this time around too, but not as many, and the trains were not as persistent.

I also notice a large discrepancy in counted rates. We saw 800 to 1000 per hour, matching the preliminary report from Apache Point of 800 per hour. But I met up with some friends who were in the eastern Mojave desert, experienced observers who counted over 2000 per hour. Likewise, Mt. Lemmon in Arizona was over 2600 as I recall. The only thing I can think of is that the count of midgets and dim meteors is affected by sky brightness. Where we were, the lights of L.A. (and Valencia) to the south are a real problem, and were visibly lighting up clouds in that area. Our southern sky was definitely brightened up, and that includes the area of Orion. My guess is that sky brightness is more likely to be a big deal than variations in density of meteors across the orbit.

My only other complaint is that the constant reporting of meteors in terms of a normalized rate per hour is confusing, misleading, and uninformative. The correct way to report meteors should be (in my opinion), to bin the real count with time. Instad of seeing a linear plot in meteors per hour running through time, I would like to see a histogram plot of meteors counted per 5 or 10 minute time period. That strikes me as far more informative, and I think most people overcount due to exuberance anyway.

It was fun, despite the fact that my sleeping bag froze.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2...htm?list482392

...from the site:

During the 2001 Leonid meteor storm, astronomers observed a curious flash on the Moon -- a telltale sign of meteoroids hitting the lunar surface and exploding.