Leonid meteor shower

Most meteors are produced by comets, and the Leonids are no exception. Every year, the Earth passes through the ice- and dust-trail of the comet Tempel-Tuttle (which can be seen every 33 years), resulting in a sometimes spectacular meteor shower.

In some cases, when the Earth travels through fresh cometary matter rates increase drastically, and if we're lucky we will see a meteor storm with up to several thousand meteors per hour, even several per second in short bursts.

The Leonids are fast meteors, causing them to leave bright trails, which can last from a few seconds to several minutes. The particles, usually between 1 mm and 1 cm in diameter, enter our atmosphere in speeds exceeding 158,000 mph.

The best way to observe the show is to dress warm, and lie down with your feet pointing east, towards Leo. Looking directly at the radiant isn't necessarily the best way to observe. Instead, look around and above it.

This year, 2001, the meteor shower was expected to be at its peak with viewing conditions expected to be excellent worldwide. Astronomers predict the next time a meteor shower of this magnitude will be visible is 2099. According to NASA, observers on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona, saw as many as 2600 per hour, and the actual peak (about 11:00 UTC) occured about an hour after the predicted time.

i remember being 5 and hearing about Halley's Comet. My parents took my brother and i to the nearest observatory for a fleeting glimpse at what looked like a fuzzy light bulb to me. For whatever reason, finding out the next time anyone would ever be able to see it would be 86 years later made a big impression on me. i've been looking up ever since.

i hurriedly called some friends saturday and let them know what was going on. i /msg'ed some of you and told you about the impending burning sky. i hope i impressed on you how big this was going to be, or at least how big i wanted it to be. If you did go out to see it because of a /msg, i hope it was everything you expected it to be.

My parents graciously let me squat at their place and bring along whomever i wanted. A motley crew of 6 people drove the hour out to the sticks and we wanted to see the sky burn.

4:45 AM, EST, 6 people were lying down on a tarp in a pasture, cold, tired, smelling horse manure but totally unwilling to get out from under the blankets. The sky was on fire and we all layed there, transfixed, rooted to the spot. Blazes of orange, yellow, red and green(!) flew across the sky like there was no tomorrow. Even though i lived there for 15 years and knew it like the back of my hand, the night sky is amazingly huge when you actually get out where you can see it. The meteors were coming from all directions and angles - it was dizzying and overwhelming and beautiful. The only way i could find to cope with it all was to stare straight up and let my eyes unfocus a bit and just watch.

i don't know how many i saw. Mabye 300, maybe 3000. They were too beautiful and fleeting to number. i stayed there until the morning sun made the sky too light to see anymore. i stood up, woefully underdressed for the 50 degree weather, sleep-deprived, hungry and happy. i watched the sky burn and all i have to show for it is a handful of wishes and a warm, reddish-orangy-yellowy-greenish glow inside of me. Little did i know i would soon end up the same way, that glow being caused by friction as i fell to earth.

"The last time this happened so intensely, it was 1800. Or 1600. But they all went outside, and thought the stars were falling. They panicked, because they all knew it had to be the end of the world."

I tried to sleep before, but I was distracted. I couldn't get his face out of my mind, his eyes. I wiggled under the covers and waited for the premature alarm. It was no surprise that I was giddy and giggly on the trip out, waving to houses with my hand stuck out the window, the clammy damp of the night's fog slapping my wrist. We were at the whim of whatever tape Ken found under his seat. This time it was the Cars. Old school Cars, with that Def Leppard metal.

We drove on and on through the fog. The lights bobbed up and down in the air as though they were on buoys in the water. The traffic moved from strip malls to bait shops. We passed under in a tunnel, and it felt that it would shoot us out the other side, like in Dukes of Hazzard. Just when we thought we were really in the boonies, an oil refinery appeared all glazed in orange, like a floating city. The streetlights passed from orange to white, until there were cavity gaps in between with no sound.

Suzy and I talked about Denny's along the way, since neither of us had eaten much that day. Ken had brought a thermos of Darjeeling tea. We drove more, until the fog was so thick and low we had barely a 10 foot visibility. What lights were left made it seem like the fog was emitting from them. We were feeling so discouraged, our window of time closing in on us. We decide to turn back and try to find a place we've passed that had less white.

We passed a line of cars pulled over, people leaned against their cars. We pulled over the rock shoulder and through a crown opening from the mist, a whole palace of stars could be seen. Ken pops his trunk to reveal a foam cooler with a bottle of wine, grapes, cheese spread and Garden Herb Triscuits (we share a passion for these things). He laid out towels on the dew soaked grass that sprouted up through the asphalt. No way you laid or stood was comfortable, but you couldn't stop looking. Then, I saw my first meteor tail. I yelped, woo-hooed, and yowed for the next hour. One by one we pointed out the lines of light like kids at the zoo: did you see that elephant mommy, did you see it stand on two feet? did you see the big red ball on the seal's nose, mommy, did you see?

I sang parts of Somewhere Out There, Have a Cigar, and Wandering Star. I could see my breath. Suzy said we have a thousand wishes to make, and my wish was that he was there with me, that we could be seeing the same stars. Well, that was one of them.

The trucks pulling boats for the early Sunday fishing were quickly becoming so common that there was no dark, only interruptions in headlights. Finally, a cop car came to a stop in its lane by our car, then another one a little while past that stopped and asked us what we were doing. They had to have know, yet they still asked. They merely suggested we sit in front of the car instead of behind it, lest someone drift from the road and hit us. Course, they could always just push Ken's Volvo over us, but I let that rest. I was just glad they didn't see the soon to be empty wine bottle.

The way home was the way it is for the departure of any frozen moment of time. I just wanted to crash, to make this night perfect by not holding onto it too tight. Suzy and Ken went on to watch the sunrise.

This is what friends are. This is what love feels like. This is what hope is. Making wishes on meteor dust alight on finger fires across the night sky.

The show this year was very spectacular, and my daughter finally stayed up late enough to see the meteor storm (upgraded from a shower). The trails were beautiful streamers of green, yellow and red. Alas, we didn't see a boloid, or a meteor big enough to look like it may reach the surface (typically about the size of a softball).

During meteor showers, some amateur radio operators get on the air and attempt to talk to each other on meteor skip, since the trails are ionized and reflect radio waves.

19 November 2002

Well, we stayed up again to see them this year, since it's supposed to be the last good shower for 97 years. My oldest daughter woke me up at 5:30am, and we watched the two-to-three per hour shower. They were not as impressive as last year, but it was still a decent show.