(meteorobs) Leonids?

[Steven Kolins]

Hi folks,

Under partly foggy skies (sometimes Sirius was a dim spot) but other times limiting seeing at mag 5 (overall perhaps 1/3rd of the sky viewable pretty clearly), my daughter and I saw 14 Leonids in an hr's time (4:30- 5:45am) this morning from central North Carolina. One shown bright enough to be seen through the foggy clouds. One of those was alittle questionable as the path didn't go right back to Leo but fairly far off to one side (passed the tail rather than near the head.) Plus one clearly non-Leonid (going north but more from the direction of Gemini and not yellow at all - more blue-greenish.) All but one left trails and were quite bright - around 0 to -3 mag. Only saw two faint meteors near 3rd mag or less. One about 5:15am flashed very brightly (lit up the sky) and very briefly from the south-south east fairly near the horizon - maybe 10 degrees above the horizon. All Leonids were yellowish to yellow-white.

Lot's of clumpiness - of the fourteen fully 6 came at least in pairs separated by less than a minute. One event was a triplet in less than a minute. The rest were isolated by at least 5 minutes.  I don't think 10 minutes passed without seeing something meteoric.

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Steven Kolins
mailto:smkolins at mac.com
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Possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart!