Leonids from San Diego

by Paul LeFevre


We had clear, dry air (29% RH) down here, so the moon was the only obstacle to seeing the shower.

From my backyard with a good view of nearly the entire sky and normally mag 5+ skies, it was still quite a good show. It started rather dramatically at 2:10 AM -- hadn't seen many "stragglers" before that, but at that time a bright bolide flew through Orion, and just as I muttered to myself, "Here we go...", they started coming very regularly. Average was about one every 10 seconds, though they usually came in bunches (10 or so in a row followed by 30 seconds or so of nothing). My favorite moment was when two mag -1 meteors burst out on parallel courses right past Castor and Pollux -- twins through the twins! The show seemed to stop just as abruptly as it began, when at 3:25 I saw a nearly head-on meteor flash out right in Leo, then nothing for a good 10 minutes, so I went inside. In two hours (1:30 - 3:30) I counted 355 meteors -- highly unscientific, numerous breaks from watching, and a few minutes spent going inside to wake up the wife & kids, who came outside for about 15 minutes during the peak (2:30 or so) and very much enjoyed the show.

My 6-year old son seemed to have an easier time spotting faint streakers than I did -- I miss having young eyes :( An especially bright bolide (-2.5?) passed through Ursa Major about 2:40 AM, drawing oohs and aahs even from my nearly 2-year old daughter. The radiant in Leo was very obvious, even my wife noticed they seemed to all be coming from a radiant in the east without any prompting.

If we hadn't had that bright moon it probably would have been spectacular. Even with the moonglow, it was a damn fine show! I had a camera with wide-angle lens open the whole time (in 10-minute increments), and it seemed that quite a few of the brighter ones went right through where I was pointing at the time, so I'm hoping I caught some on film. Will know in a couple of days.