Leonids

huckflynn · Nov 18, 2001

We got up at 4:30 this morning, put the coffee on, grabbed a sleeping bag, stretched it out on the lawn and caught a wonderful display of "shooting stars." It was a perfect morning for viewing the event here in upstate NY- clear and cold. I could hear a few of my neighbors with their children admiring the display.

My grandson sure enjoyed it. And he seemed as fascinated as I was that this display would not repeat itself in such a spectacular fashion for close to another hundred years. I hope you had a chance to see it.

MossRoad · Nov 18, 2001

All fog in Indiana. We drove from South Bend to Indy on Saturday and it was foggy for 120 mile in the middle of the day. Never cleared up until outskirts of Indy. Got up at 5:00 this morning and couldn't see the trees, let alone the sky. I try to see this shower every year. It usually is great. Glad you saw it.

 MossRoad

Henry · Nov 18, 2001

We were out camping with my sons scout troop last night. We got the whole gang up at 5:00am to watch the meteor shower! We had clear weather in North Florida and really enjoyed the show.

Jag · Nov 18, 2001

We had a great show. It was a little cloudy when it started but cleared up about 5:00. We got up and out in lawn chairs in the middle of a 100 acre field, the nearest town 4,000 was 10 miles away over two hills.. I feel sorry for any body who did not get to see it. Glad some of you guys had the scouts out.....

Harv · Nov 19, 2001

Just happened to be up at the property (2,000 feet). /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
Just happened to have a clear sky (first time in weeks) /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Started seeing some sky action around 1am. (west coast advantage). Roused the family at 1:30 as the action was really picking up. We all gathered on the floor of the upstairs bedroom, right in front of the sliding glass doors leading to the balcony, all snuggled and warm. From there we could see a fair portion of the eastern sky, which was enough to see one of them shooting stars about once every 10 seconds.

I was pleased that my 9-year old daughter enjoyed it enough to stay awake for a full hour, just watching and counting. Anybody notice how hypnotizing it was? At one point I opened the door a bit and we could hear the "ooooh"s and "ahhhhhh"s from some of the neighbors. Surprising, since they had to be at least a quarter of a mile away. I'm guessing their enthusiasm was amplified by the "spirits" they were using to keep warm out there. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

njrqs · Nov 19, 2001

We hardly ever get rain here.

Guess what. 2mm of rain overnight. Just enough so we could see ABSOLUTELY NOTHING !!

I'm glad some of you got to see it.

Cheers

Neil from OZ.

PitbullMidwest · Nov 19, 2001

this display would not repeat itself in such a spectacular fashion for close to another hundred years

You sure about that Huck? According to the "experts" on the news, we should see a repeat in 37 years, the last show of this magnatude was 35 years ago.

Any astronomers out there?

huckflynn · Nov 19, 2001

Am I sure about it? Heck, I'm flabbergasted that anyone could forecast repetitions 35 years out nevermind 98 years. Still, that is what I read. Here's a link to the article at space.com. The final paragraph reads: "It's now or never," said Robert Naeye, editor of Mercury, the magazine of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. "People should take advantage of this year's Leonid storm, because astronomers don't think we'll see another storm like this one until the year 2099. We will probably never see a better meteor shower in our lifetimes."

If the astronomers are right then you can change the "probably" to "certainly" for me and leave it at "probably" for my grandson./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Harv · Nov 19, 2001

Guess I heard the same report Huck did. Next time will be in the year 2098. It could be they were referring to the next time we hit the Leonid comet trail in this fashion again. Certainly there will be other "shows" before then, but maybe not quite as spectacular.

GlueGuy · Nov 19, 2001

Yes, we got up at 1AM and set up a pad and our sleeping bags out on the deck. It was pretty warm here for mid-November (mid 40's), and the sky was almost completely clear. There was a very thin cloud layer out to the southwest, but nothing above and elsewhere.

A couple of friends had come up to see the show as well. We were ooh-ing and ah-ing at all the streaks! I was amazed by the variety of shapes, sizes, patterns and colors! There were fat ones, thin ones, long ones, short ones, fast ones, slow ones, and many, many colors. What a show! We even saw a few that left a streak in the sky after they were "gone". A couple of the left-over streaks stuck around for maybe 30 seconds after the fact.

Another oddity was seen at least a couple of times. This was when the meteor would leave a trail like a contrail, then appear to go out, then very shortly afterward would explode! Left a trail in the sky like an exclamation point: !

It was quite a treat.

BTW - According to my Science News, the comet that leaves these nuggets orbits the sun every 33 years. Each time it passes our neighborhood, it takes a different path, and leaves a thin trail of particles. We get the shower when we pass through one of those trails. Sunday morning, we were passing through at least 6 of the known trails. They also said that the show next year "could" be better than this year (10X the number of meteorsaccording to some), except that it will occur during a full moon. Bottom line is that this is one of the best.

The GlueGuy