It's a beautiful and clear night 11/16/00. With me are California Meteor Society members and friends Pete Zarubin, Ming Li, Morris Jones, Akkana Peck, Dave North and David Smith. We have two batteries of cameras, one with 4 and one with 13 35mm cameras, mounted in a circular battery, facing upwards. We are taking 10 minute exposures. We will have taken 16 exposures through all cameras by the time I left at 3:00 am.
We are participating in a project coordinated by Dr. Peter Jenniskens, NASA AMES and SETI. Two teams gathered in the California Bay area for a multi-station photography project. The other group is set up at Fremont Peak State Park, near the 30 inch reflector (with a videocamera pointed at the dark side of the moon moon to look for impacts). Similar equipment was operated from Spain and Portugal in an effort coordinated by Hans Betlem and colleagues of the Dutch Meteor Society, with support from Jiri Borovicka and Pavel Spurny of Ondrejov Observatory. The team I flew to the Leonid Storm over the Mediterranean Sea were scattered around the world. Most of us were doing some sort of project or another. Results later.
I came prepared with my shortwave radio tuned to WWV, audio cassette, and not enough warm clothes. The first night went something like this:
At the tone, the time is 7 hours 28 minutes Coordinated Universal Time. This is Jane Houston Jones, reporting from the Year 2000 Leonid Observing session at United Technologies Inc. in South San Jose, California. Latitude 37.15N, Long 121.56 W.
We are setting up all the camera equipment. Estimated Limiting Magnitude (prior to moon rise) is 5.9 and after moonrise, this dropped to 5.4. I used the LM chart area 6 (Alpha Andromeda-Gamma-Alpha Peg) found at http://www.seds.org/billa/lm/rjm6.html where I saw between 8 and 6 stars in the square. I was too cold to do much limiting magnitude observing, let alone any other observing. My eyeballs were frozen, and most observing was done in the car with the heater on. In a nutshell, we saw maybe 40 Leonids all night long from 11:00 until 03:00 am. (UTC 7:00 until 11:00 UTC November 17) I hope we caught some of the brilliant fireballs on film. A dozen great fireballs, and three dozen lesser Leonids. Many with brilliant persistent trains
I recorded the following on my audiocassette over the course of a couple hours:
Leonid from moon to M-42 ..mag 4th.. 07:46:30 UTC (all times are in UTC)
Akkana simulated the UTC beep into the tape recorder.
The sounds of meteor observing in the night...howls, hoots, screeches...four footed animals like coyotes made less noise later.
Mag 4.5 from easternmost star of the great square to down and a little west. 07:53
Running along the horizon basically about uh 10 degrees elevation from perhaps southeast to east..no...no... that would be east to southeast...cool 07:54...it died about 15 degrees south of the east end of Lepus.
Crinkle of space blankets...they do work! Just ask Mojo.
Nice long train...a slow Taurid...running along the bottom of the dipper, no in the middle of the big dipper. (my personal favorite of the night)
08:06:05 Zenith...Leonid...wake..fireball overhead during the 3rd set of exposures
40 degree train, maybe magnitude -2 although it got brighter then dimmer as it went by. It was going toward Cassiopeia but it didn't quite make it.
08:18:30
It's a good time to change the cameras after a bright fireball. (So we did)
Short wave radio is totally covered with ice at 3:00 am (11:00 UTC November 17.)
We are packing up after a really fun night. Home at 4:00 am. In a few hours we drive 350 miles to southern California. A family celebration...wedding reception.
Reporting from Camarillo in Ventura County, California. 11/18/00. Latitude 34.12N, 119.02 W Longitude. Recorder is on and so are the Leonids. It is Show time! We arrived at 07:00 and began observing at 07:39 Universal Coordinated Time.
Limiting Magnitude is better than last night. Using the same chart, LM with moonrise is 6.3 - I can count 12 stars in the square. (15-20 are usual and easy at my usual observing locales).
We are beginning to see alot of Leonids right away. One near and as bright as Capella. Mag 4, oh another, mag 4, then two really bright fireballs at 08:47:00. Those were going north from Leo to Polaris. Another at 08:48.
We are estimating ZHR of 80 right now - using the time period from 08:39 to 09:09.
Another right through Orion at 08:50:00. Two in the last minute through Orion to Ursa Major. Another 08:54 and another at 08:57. Mojo thinks he saw a pointer near Rigel. A Taurid, he thinks. 09:01 a huge bright Leonid like mag -2. Right through Orion's sword. An itty bitty one. Taurid from Jupiter to Cassiopeia, about mag 4. A good one mag 1. Raney (Mojo's mom) saw one at 09:11, another big one. With that we called it a night.
Next night we set up the two telescopes we brought on our trip. Strider, the 12.5 inch reflector and the 4.1 inch AP Traveler. Both are travelers and are our traveling companions. This was the best night of all, seeing wise, and Jupiter, Saturn and the Moon thrilled us and our eyepiece visitors.
This concludes the year 2000 Leonid Broadcast Services. For information about the storm of 1999 see my scrapbook at http://www.whiteoaks.com/mojo/jhmac/