by Jim Ster
I saw that big green and red one around 2:40 - 2:45 from my backyard in Sacramento! That was definitely the best one I saw last night. The moon and the subsequent glare off all the high altitude moisture kept the show from really being spectacular here, but I'm still glad that I went out for a peek.
I went out at 2:30 and was pleasantly surprised. There was considerable high altitude moisture which was really causing a huge amount of glare from the full moon. I almost turned around and went back to bed when I was suddenly rewarded with a flurry of about 5 or 6 beautiful bright red streaks to the north. Wow, just like last year! I was instantly pumped up and set up a chair on the northeast side of my house to block the moon. I had a fairly good horizon to from the south east to the north. Unfortunately my enthusiasm waned quickly as I only saw about 1 or 2 Leonids per minute in the light polluted skies over Carmichael. Like last year, when they came, they came in little spurts, but this time the spurts only had 2 or 3 decent ones instead of the 7 or 8 that I saw last year and they came no where near as often. About ten minutes into my watch I saw a huge green and red fireball fall out of Orion and leave a beautiful cinder trail. This ended up being the high point of the night and I called it quits around 3:30.