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 ?
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?
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.
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!
Last edited by Outbackmanyep; 18-11-2009 at 12:51 PM.
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.
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.
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???
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.
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.
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
Last edited by fringe_dweller; 18-11-2009 at 01:34 PM.
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.
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?
It has supposedly peaked, but NASA's FLUXTIMATOR 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.
Thank goodness it wasn't a meteor storm I missed.
orionids seem to be star in recent years, remember oct '06? that was cool
Elyce! I'm glad you saw plenty. Makes up for me seeing none. OK, I'll try the Geminids in December 
