RE: [Utah-astronomy] Leonids
I went down to Parowan Gap. At 8:55pm I saw a bright green bolide. It came in just south of Cassiopia. The interesting thing was that it appeared to hit a cloud bank. Just as it reached the cloud bank, it lurched, a little bit broke off and the main meteor continued under the cloud cover. I am not sure this was possible so it may have just been my viewing angle. I eventually went to bed and woke up at 2am. I thought they put on a good show. I counted bursts of 10 or more a second. I also noticed that most of what I saw was looking right at Leo. There were a lot of short bright meteors right near the radiant. The longer ones that I saw were going toward Canis Major. At around 3:50 the clouds got pretty thick. At about 4:30 I went back to bed. I know last year I saw more meteors, but that was without the moon. I think this year may have exceeded last year if we could have seen the dim meteors bouncing all the way across the sky. It was definitly worth the drive to the south. How was St. George? I couldn't leave early enought to get all the way down there.
The Leonids from St. George were pretty good. During the peak, I counted an average of one every three or four seconds.. That comes out to about 1200 per hour. Not too bad for having a full moon in the sky. The claim is that diminishes the meteors seen by a factor of ten. No full moon and we may have seen 12000 per hour. I'd call that a storm. I was playing around with my digital camera, and got the enclosed photo. I actually caught a Leonid! It is just to the left and slightly down from Algeiba. Not bad for a 20 second exposure! My wife was in Phoenix and reported about the same frequency from suburbsurbs there. We observed from Ft. Pierce. The sky was mostly clear until around 4:00 am. Then high, thin cirrus rolled in from the north. It was pretty much over by then anyway. It was like someone turned the valve off just before 4 am. Overall, I think it was a great trip. Good company, good night, and a bunch of meteors. We also saw about a hundred dino footprints and natural impressions. Brent __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your site http://webhosting.yahoo.com
participants (2)
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Brent Watson -
David Dunn