by Rod Norden
I checked Source 2 and Source 3 of ESOC and the Leonids count is back down to 250 per hour or so after peaking earlier at around 2000. It appears I have missed my 2nd Leonid storm. I was a freshman at UVa majoring in Astronomy in 1966 and I went up to their Leander- McCormick Observatory on that frigid November evening hoping to see the storm and I did see about 250 of them in 2 hours, but not the storm that was seen in the Western US. I am hoping some are left for later this evening from here.
I may be the only observer on TAC who has already seen a transit of Mercury. I saw the transit of Nov 1960 with my 3" reflector from Edmund Scientific Corp, the Orion of the day. I had saved my lunch money in the 6th grade to get it, and was about to upgrade to their 4-1/4" at Christmas that year. On the day of the transit, John Kennedy had come to the Navy Base at Norfolk where I was living to give a speech. My parents went to see him. Oh the memories that came back on Monday.
This year I set up my 92 mm f/5 Astrophysics with the Baader filter I used at the eclipse in Turkey on the MIRA trip. We were at the College on 12th Street in Austin near the State Capital Bldg. About 200 people stopped by, including my computer class which was meeting at the time (the class ran from 2:50 to 4:05 PM CST, almost precisely the time of the transit!) We have had good clear skies here for many days with only a few cirrus coming up from Mexico. During the transit, virtually the only patch of very thin cirrus came by, so we had very clear to slightly cloudy sky at the time. The granulation and the great sunspots were very clear through most of the transit. It was much better than I remembered from 1960, although I was expecting Mercury to be small. We also had a few lawyers and legislators stop by as well as a couple of homeless types. Very interesting.
I would like to compliment William Phelps on his fantastic image of the transit. It is unforgettable!!!