Leonids viewing

[NeilW]

According to info on the web, the Leonid meteor shower is supposed to reach its peak on the 18th November this year. From the Southern Hemisphere, would the best viewing time therefore be early morning on the 18th or the 19th?

Thanks

Neil.

[Outbackmanyep]

Early morning on the 18th, predictions of meteor storms of 500+/hr happen at various times throughout that morning but will favour Asian countries, some models predict a frenzy at about 11am our time! LOL ZHR's range from 40 to 100+, i'm hoping it'll exceed predicitons!


Still worth a look, Leo rises about 2am so you may catch a few bright ones comng over the horizon, i'll be watching from 1am onwards........

Remember not to expect a good showing but be there if it happens!!!

[NeilW]

Thanks. I'll be watching, just in case!

[Octane]

It's a pity that their peak is during our daytime. Still, leading up to sunrise should be good!

Regards,
Humayun

[digitalplankton]

looking forward to this one!

[mswhin63]

Why so early in the morning.

[Clarry]

I wish I knew. It seems every time there's a shower, 4 to 5am is the best viewing time. Never once seen a 9pm optimum time.

[erick]

If you think about the rotation of the earth and its revolution around the Sun, you will see that is the time when the atmosphere above you is ploughing into the dust stream. In theory, the best time would be during the first half of the day - pity it's a bit bright then. :D During the early evening, much of the earth is between you and the "oncoming" dust stream.

[Outbackmanyep]

The Leonids have a typical speed of 71km/s, the Earth slams into a stream on the morning side as that is the direction of the Earths orbital motion.
For meteors to enter our atmosphere in the evenings they have to "catch up" to Earth, whereas in the morning they slam head on......

Like driving in a car, thats why you never see bugs splattered on your back window!

[Clarry]

I suppose that makes sense, pity though.


You've never seen my neighbor reverse out of his driveway.

[Kevnool]

I shall be outside to catch this event.
From the IMO and NASA sites it all sounds great.
As said Be out there just in case.
The new moon adds the topping to the pudding.

Cheers Kev.

[Jabba]

Would you be able to view this meteor shower with the naked eye? if so would it be worth it?
I really wanna see it!!!

[orestis]

hi jabba,
Yes ,actually thats pretty much the only way because their so fast but binoculars are good if they leave a trail.well everyone is saying the leonids are going to be great with over 100 meteors per hour i think this is a good opportunity to enjoy a meteor storm.Even though its in the morning i think it will be worth it.

can't wait to see them myself,its going to be great.

orestis:thumbsup:

[orestis]

hi everyone,

i was just wondering if i had a look tonight will there be a lot of meteors or should i wait until the peak.

thanks in advance
orestis:thumbsup:

[Jazza11]

Yea if i went out tonight would i see any???

[erick]

Probably not tonight, but I know of someone who says they plan to observe every night from Sun to Thur!!

Best bet would be three nights, straddling the expected maximum - so Tue, Wed and Thur mornings, from about 2am to 5am! Yawn!

[Rakarth]

Hi all, : )
I'm a complete noob and know nothing about astronomy but am willing to go for a long drive to have a good view of the Leonids shower. Can anyone recommend a good place to view them from for someone living in Sydney Australia?

[Octane]

Hi Rak (small world), :P

Where abouts are you in Sydney? You're welcome to join us at Lake George near Canberra. :P

Regards,
Humayun

[glenc]

Looked for Leonids this morning from 3:45am to 4:05 am DST. Did not see any.
Here is my report from 2001 http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/01comment34.txt

[CoombellKid]

Was out for a bit at 1am this morning.... didn't see any. But then again
I wasn't actually looking for them.

Will have another look see tomorrow.

Cheers,CS

[gaa_ian]

Well here in the Far North our success was a bit better ...
Saw 20 leonids this morning between 4 and 5 am.
2 of them were quite bright and prolonged (2 to 3 sec)
2 more were point source and quite surprising to see.

We will be out there again in the am tomorrow,
what I hope will be a much better show
on the leading edge of the Asian Peak.

[Jabba]

My alarm will be set for 2am tonight, I hope to see something :>

[erick]

Forecast for here - partly cloudy. :prey:

I've got as much sleep as I could last night - a whole 6 hours :sadeyes:

Have to get home and make up a power cable so I can power a small heater strap on the camera lens from battery. Then get some sleep, then up around midnight. It will take over an hour to get to my observing site! :screwy:

[redwolf]

Hi All,

Am finally back - have been off learning to walk again and am now confident enough in that department to want to venture outside tonight to see Leonids with the 2 teenagers (and hopefully not fall over anything in the dark :-) As I'm in Adelaide (very dark spot ~5 km N of Mt Pleasant), what time should I be setting the alarm clock for?

RedWolf

[erick]

:question:

[cookie8]

Partly cloudy here. Two DSLR all charged up & ready to fire away. Hope I can see something.:prey:

[mithrandir]

Somehow I don't think so Vincent. Totally cloudy here and it has been raining. :sadeyes:

[Analog6]

Well, here I am and there are the clouds. I had my new 16-35 f2.8 lens all hooked up, ready to go, and the med format SLR too, and all I have are clouds. [SOUND OF FEET STAMpING] Why is it always cloudy . . .?

[chrisp9au]

3.45 and I've only seen about 4 in the past 90 minutes, one fairly bright, the others very faint.
Clear skies, a lot of dew.
Patience is a virtue!

Cheers :thumbsup:

Chris

[Jazza]

No clouds here, pretty decent night actually. Very dark out, transparency isn't so good, and there's an awful lot of glow in the east (looks like hazy too there) smc and lmc are easily visible though.

Spent about an hour outside, saw maybe 10? One head on and 3 bright ones, the rest were flashers.

[chrisp9au]

4.30am, off to bed for a while before heading to work.
A couple of very bright slow moving objects about 4.20, heading south close to Corvus, so slow I suspected they might have been iridium flares.
Checking on Heavens Above, the times don't fit for my location so they were either satellites catching the morning sun, or Leonids.
5 more fast faint Leonids in the last 45 minutes.

Cheers :thumbsup:
Chris

[Octane]

Cloud.

[swannies1983]

Seen only one bright Leonid in the last 40 mins but clouds have started to roll in. Back to bed for me!

[CoombellKid]

All clouded in here, which started with thunder and rain last night : (

even had to drag the 16" in, was going to have a session with Mars
this morning.

Cheers,CS

[redwolf]

It's currently 0450 and I've been up viewing since 0330. Only forced to give up viewing at the dawn/dusk terminus.
No clouds, ambient temp of 14.9, minimum background clutter and the sky show was well-and-truley worth it!
Saw ~15 Leonids: a number of bright flashers sans tail; several higher ones - small, bright with tails that hung for a few seconds; and one magnificent Leonid that crossed NE to S almost directly overhead with a v long bright tail. The body lit up the ground as it died, and it's debris tail was still visible some minutes later. :eyepop:
Will be back out tomorrow at approximately the same time to see what's happening.
Roll on Leonids 2010

Oh, also had a very good view of Mars and Saturn :D

[Crackers]

Saw the same one from Kersbrook, Redwolf, made it worth the effort of getting up. Other than that a couple of brights and a hanful of faint flashers that I'd have trouble convincing a jury that I saw. Also saw a couple of anti-Leonids that ended up in Leo but started from the West.

Kinda hard to be disappointed at something that Mother Nature throws at us for free, but it was well short of some previous efforts. The early start is going to make today's endless meetings even harder to endure.:sadeyes:

[redwolf]

Hang in there Crackers - know what you mean about observing meteors and long meetings!

[Protiotype]

Quite hazy here in innerish-suburban Brisbane (especially "pink/peach" towards the horizon) after the brief thunderstorm last night, so I ended up viewing very casually* in a park without too much glare from street lamps (once again applying not enough insect repellent!).

Saw two meteors; I think one Leonid and maybe one Taurid from roughly 03:00 to 03:30 (GMT+10). Both were fast and brief, no tails sighted. I couldn't actually see Leo through the haze (although more obvious constellations were noticed).. The one I'll accept as a Leonid was moving to the left and the other one towards the right.

Observation session was lazy and haphazard because my true goal was a walk to fetch soft drink and pie. That was a success and I also happened to find two meteors along the way. :)

Hoping the upcoming Geminids get paired with a much clearer sky because the weather here looks similarly difficult over the next couple of nights.

* Cancelled a more formal gazing session due to cloud, so I instead just spontaneously headed off alone after everyone else went to bed.

[cookie8]

Some are lucky but me excluded. Started to rain at 1:30. At 3:30 no rain but wall to wall clouds. Did not border to hang around any longer considering twilight begins at 4:10. Woke up 7:30 and guess what I saw?
..... perfect blue sky:mad2: Did I miss anything during my sleep? That's something I could never find out.

[chrisp9au]

I've just rechecked with Heavens Above, changing my location from Lostock to Kyneton!, and sure enough they were Iridium flares, Iridium 21 & 72.

Cheers :thumbsup:
Chris

[Jabba]

alarm woke me up at 2am, went outside for a good 30 minutes but saw nothing but cloud :/

[gaa_ian]

Another good morning for the Leonids here in Nhulunbuy.
Six of us from GAA were out at out at “Middle Carpark” looking over the Arafura sea.
Notch was the first there at 3:30am and along with Dave and Peter were lucky enough to see one Leonid fireball, moving from east to west and lasting several seconds.
They were joined by myself, Francois and Bruce & all up there were 70 Leonids sighted till the sky grew too bright at 5am.
So I guess an average of 50/hr is a fair assesment. More than double yesterday mornings count.
One of the best Leonid showings since 2001, so worth getting up for !

I would love to hear some reports of the Asian Leonids peak, did you get a “1/2 storm” as predicted ?

[erick]

Groan, Chris! I was at Romsey, just down the road, and spent the entire time in fog which started light, but didn't lift, just got heavier!

The forecast had been for "partly cloudy", but I couldn't tell for the fog.

I left home at 12:45 to clear skies, suffered fog from 2-5am, now am sitting at work with beautiful sunshine and clear skies. :mad2:

So it wasn't meant to be. :sadeyes: Thank goodness it wasn't a meteor storm I missed.

I set the camera tracking and clicking away just in case. I think I have several GByte of pictures of fog! :D

[chrisp9au]

That explains the haze on my eastern horizon, top of your fog bank! :(

Cheers :thumbsup:
Chris

[bloodhound31]

We had the high fog come in at 11pm and there it stayed. UGH!

Baz.

[Freeride2001]

Got up about 3:30am watched from the comfort of a nice chair in front yard till 4:30am. Perfect weather good seeing but saw only about 3. Do you think it worth another go tommorow morning weather permiting or has the peak passed?

[robin]

Great night here in Warrnambool. Rose at 2.55 & between 4 & 5.30ish, saw 4 cracking meteors. The 1st left a contrail & was very bright & another came in low. Few between but those 4 were worth the early rise.

[Outbackmanyep]

I was up from 1am to 5am and saw 14 leonids, 28 sporadics, observed from the roadside between Woolbrook and Bendemeer, west of Walcha.

Broken cloud ruined the viewing for a little while.
I reckon overall the Orionids were better than the Leonids here!
I have not heard any reports from the northern hemisphere, i guess those further north would have had more sky to see more Leonids in!

Onto the Geminids!

[erick]

Packing up this morning. Sigh......:sadeyes:

[lepton3]

From my back yard in suburban Adelaide from about 3am to 5am saw a total of 2 sporadics and 2 Leonids.

The first Leonid was pretty spectacular, started low in the East and travelled almost to the zenith.

The second one was amazing. It was so bright I saw the flash on the ground around me, and it travelled well overhead leaving a trail that lasted around 20 seconds.

Packed up at about 5am when scattered cloud got a bit too thick.

Pretty sure light pollution prevented me from seeing all but the brightest, but boy, those two were spectacular.

[Quark]

Got up at 3:00AM CSST and drove out of Broken Hill about 4km to the North West, set my banana lounge up on a clay pan and was observing by 3:20AM CSST.

There was no cloud, the temp was a most pleasant 22C and the seeing was great with the stars being very steady almost to the horizon.

In the 90 minutes prior to twilight I recorded:
5 Leonid meteors, 3 of which were very bright at least mag -4,
5 sporadic meteors,
1 Taurids meteor,

The Taurids meteor was the highlight, very slow moving and extremely bright, so bright that even though I was concentrating on the quadrant of the sky in the direction of Leo, from my semi prone position on my banana lounge this meteor captured my attention, even though it was behind me.

I must say that I really didn't expect much more from the Leonid's, there is little chance of recording storm levels for at least 100 years.

Back in 2001 I recorded Leonid's data for the IMO and Rob McNaught, now that was a storm. Following mentions that there maybe semi storm levels this year I dug up my spreadsheet from 2001 with my data.

I had a talking countdown timer set 5 mins that continually reset and recorded my observation in a spreadsheet as set out by the IMO procedure. I later, used this data in a project when doing my degree at Swinburne University.

There were two peaks predicted by Rob McNaught & Dave Asher at 17:21UTC & 18:09UTC.

I have attached my data to demonstrate what a "Storm" delivered.

Regards
Trevor

[Nico13]

Got out at 3am and by 4.45 high fog was in so that was the end of that.
Back to bed.
Saw nothing in the 45 min I had but am in the middle of setting up a new pier I'v just built with a super Polaris and Meade Auotstar so I had the camera with my 300mm f4 and snapped a couple of shots of the Horses head as it was high in the sky and clear.

Still some work to do with tracking yet.

One question I do have is how do I go about indentifying a mystery slow moving object that popped up in some shots I'd done earlier about ten last night.

A strange green fuzzy object passing by the alignment of Jupiter.
I was using Jupiter as a guide to my drive alingment and in about four or five images this object moved some distance but remained in the frame of the 300mm lens.

Will post some shots tonight after work but how do we indentify these things???

Nico.

[rogerg]

I set up my camera to take pics all night, hoping to catch a few leonids amongst the clouds. It turned out that it rained a considerable amount from 1am onwards, and I didn't capture any Leonids as a result. The camera was protected from the rain.

http://www.rogergroom.com/items/leonids2009_photos

Roger.

[fringe_dweller]

yep, i'm also dubious about these predicted 'good' leonid's showers, for southern Oz, outside of 33 year cycle or so 'window', ...i remember 2006 from burra gorge, had slightly better count than i see here, and they did get a coupla hundred an hour from N.europe, they are pretty good at predicting times now, ... hey '98 was great from S.Oz, a strong 'fireball' shower will do just as nicely as storm ;) orionids seem to be star in recent years, remember oct '06? that was cool

[ellbell]

hey everyone,
I drove out of town from Dubbo nsw this morning (18th), and had a geeze into the sky. From 2am till 3am i saw about 20 . i wasnt expecting to see anything so i was heaps happy about that,i had to work this morning so i went home after that but yeah there was definately something happening.

[erick]

:welcome: Elyce! I'm glad you saw plenty. Makes up for me seeing none. OK, I'll try the Geminids in December :)

[digitalplankton]

has this shower peaked, or does it peak tonight?

[Protiotype]

A friend of mine says he saw two large fireballs from Cleveland Point, Brisbane; one of which was blue and high overhead, moving towards the CBD.

Well, at around 03:15 this morning (give or take 15 mins); I noticed (from Taringa, inner-western Brisbane) this strange blueish glow from beneath my horizon/treeline which I dismissed as some strange isolated glow of lightning.

He doesn't have any precise times or location and I can't say I have many better details either, but was anyone else watching from and around SE QLD? See anything that looked like a fireball in the cloudy haze?

[Protiotype]

It has supposedly peaked, but NASA's FLUXTIMATOR (http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/estimator.html) doesn't seem to show a huge difference between last night and the nights around it in the numbers (at least for suburban Brisbane) - you could get lucky. Don't forget to set the date to 2009.

[ellbell]

well thats good ! hehe :)

[Jabba]

Anyone see any last night? clearish sky in Sydney and I was up at about 2am-3am and saw nothing ;(

[digitalplankton]

i got up at 4am and saw a around 8 or 9 before the sun rose..

was very cool..

[Reemul]

Hey
Anyone spot a largish fireball @ 9:40pm north of Brissy? Left a smoke trail for 5 mins. Travelling west from Orion.
Gotta love luck, as I was only looking out the window as the fire brigade were driving past with sirens blaring.
Are the fireballs typical of Leonids or something different?

[Dexter]

Yup, my friend saw it and heard the impact from glass house mountains. All the street lights in my area went out because it was bright enough to trip the light sensors.

For some reason my computer also restarted itself at the same time for no reason, all I can think of was it hit a high tension power line or something where it landed and caused a power drop.

cool stuff, wish I had of seen it.