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(meteorobs) Palm Springs Leonids 11/16-17/98
Hello everybody...Kinda new to all this...Don't plot, and didn't count....
I live in Laguna Hills, Ca....and drove out to a "Dark" Place I know near
Palm Springs, Ca.
My kids and I arrived about 1:30 am local time to magnificently clear skys
and a bright moon actually casting our shawdows on the ground......Set our
chairs to face generally east..watching the sky from North to South....
Things started off kinda slow the first half hour or so...and my 11 y/o son
bailed out on me, and curled up in the car.. My 10 y/o daughter and I stayed
up and saw some nice meteors arcing from the eastern sky, over our
heads...Wasn't long, and I looked down, and all I saw was a hand sticking out
of her sleeping bag. Oh well...
I continued to watch, and it seemed that more and more, the tendency was for
them so arc from overhead to the North... Although occasional scans of other
directions occasionally resulted in seeing a meteor...At about 2:45 things
seemed to pick up.. with about 7-9 meteors over the next 45 min...One
"Double" with a pair of meteors appearing nearly simutaniously, High in the
sky, and decend, more Westerly than North, nearly paralelling each other
about 10 degrees apart, slowly diverging as they fell...no trains... just a
quick streak
At 3:31 am local I saw a very bright meteor arc from high in the northern
sky, (about 60 deg ele) straight down Leaving a long sparkly trail and
disintagrating at about 15 deg above the horizon the meteor was relativley
fast, as compaired to most that I saw.The train was Yellowish green, and
lasted only about 2 seconds. The thing that was most impressive about this
meteor, was its extraordinary brightness... even with that bright moon
overhead... It was signifigant....
I woke my daughter, and we watched together for about 45 min or so, and saw a
few nice sreaks falling in the north, some with trains...and a couple of
long, much slower meteors arcing from west to east...(Taurids ?)
Wasn't long, and she was cold...We hit it to a convience store about 8 miles
away for some hot chocolate... That did the triick, they were both up
now....back out to the desert in a rush, so as not to miss the anticipated
5:30 am secondary peak...which kind of seemed to peter out as compared to
earlier events...we saw a few more, but nothing spectacular...with the glow
from the sun, rising in the east, we called it a night. just before 6am....
With about 3.5 hours observing (allowing about 45 min or so for speedy
mart)... I'd estimate that I saw about 30 or so Meteors , most travelling
from east to west...and most of those, to the north....except those 2
distinctly different , slower eastbound streaks around 4 am...yes they were
chronologically close together...maybe 10 min apart... the "Peak activity"
seemed to be from around 3-4 am...
Oh yes, another highlight of the night...and probably due to that bright
moon....... we all saw what I believe to be a satillite, travelling from
south to north also around 4 am...From the time that I spotted it, nearly
directly overhead, untill it dissappeared from my 7X35 binocular aided view
was at least 2 min... cool.... Don...