by Donn Mukensnable
Tired, but very happy to have seen the best meteor storm in the better part of a century. At the peak, we SAW that 1000/hr rate, and it was specatular in the purest sense of the word!
Not without a little melodrama, however. After being clear during the day and a hint of cirrus at sunset, the sky clouded almost completely over at about 9pm. This wasn't the usual coastal fog (that was there, too, but 1500 feet below the observatory) but thick nimbus. Once again, it seemed the fickle nature of Nature had thwarted our observing plans. Some folks gave up and drove east for clearer skies. We stuck it out at Fremont Peak.
Around 12:30~1am (the winds aloft moved slowly) the clouds disappeared to the east, revealing a pitch-black sky ablaze with shooting stars. They were coming in at Perseid rates then, creating long streaks of fire across the sky, with the brighter ones leaving luminous trains that lasted for minutes afterward. This was a nice sh ower, very comparable to the Leonids of past years. Then it turned 2am...
It was like the cosmic dustbin finally got shaken out. Rapidly, the arrival rate soared into triple digits and series of meteors, one after another, started to appear. Many of these were brighter as well, ending their trip into the atmosphere with a flash of light that cast shadows on the ground and caused the assembled crowd of observers to "ooh" and "aaahhh" along with the occasional gleeful "WOW, that was a Bright Leonid!". Gazing towards Leo, which rested on the horizon, one could see meteors streaming up into the sky like a fireworks display. The radiant was clearly defined by little spike of light all around it. Seeing multiple meteors in the sky suddenly became commonplace, as was picking out the streaks of light in whatever direction you were looking. Series of related flashes appeared, as did multiple entries one after another on almost the same path across the brilliant constellation s of Taurus, Gemini, and Orion. The winter Milky Way streamed overhead as the meteors came still faster.
There was a team of volunteers from NASA, observing in a classic 'eight points of the compass plus zenith' pattern who used a series of standard PC mice connected into a laptop to record counts. Left button was a Leonid; right button everything else, which included not a few Taurids. The shouts of "yow" and "amazing" tapered off, not because there was less to see, but because there was more. First magnitude fire streaked across the sweep of the galaxy simultaneously; looking to the far south and west gave the appearance of a storm of light falling on the earth. Every few minutes came a brilliant flash and a luminous line that quickly contorted into a curlicue. My favorite was an (estimated -9) bolide that flashed white, then green, then violet before disappearing in a momentarily blinding flash. This one was close to the radiant and highly foreshortened.
I could see the 'core' of meteoric dust clearly within this cloud of ionized atmosphere that surrounded it. Other meteors were seen to split in mid-passage, flying off on new paths or splitting into chunks. We watched the heavens in awe. Highest ZHR recorded at our station was 880+, with several clumps that easily reached 1000/hr of bright meteors. There were either very few faint ones, or the were missed in the rest of the fireworks display.
Someone asked for a time check, and it was a quarter to four. Finally the Leonids had slacked off a little. Back to 'only' ~200/hr; the difference was obvious. Even so, the 'big ones' kept coming and there were several trains in the sky at once. There was time to observe other things now, like the constant glimmer of Canopus hovering over the due-south gap in the hills and the ghostly cone of Zodaical Light that stretched from the now 45-degree high Leo to the horizon. Time, too, to glimpse Jupiter and Saturn and Vesta (hidin g among the Hyades) between the seemingly constant flashes of light. One brilliant Leonid outshone Jupiter at -4 before streaking behind the Peak and then exploding to backlight the mountain.
Predictions were for a secondary peak that Asia would encounter, but we did not see any ramp up in counts as the night passed and a hint of twilight began to seep into the eastern horizon at the same time another band of clouds appeared in the west. One way or another, the curtains were being drawn down on a phenomenal display of the Great Leonid Storm of 2001. We closed the observatory and went back to our sleeping bags just as Venus rose, ruby-red and twinkling madly in the dawn horizon haze. Jupiter and Saturn and Orion were beginning to fade overhead.
This night of the long meteors was certainly something to be remembered always.
WOW! Another bright Leonid...