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(meteorobs) Re: Leonids meteor shower




>In November, the Earth's atmosphere will be hit with the most severe 
>meteor shower in 33 years, a bombardment of debris that could damage or 
>destroy some of the nearly 500 satellites that provide worldwide 
>communications, navigation and weather-watching. 
>
>Leonid meteoroid storm is coming this November.

This message of Victor's clearly demonstrates the dangers of bombastic and 
imflammatory language in public forums, especially when there is incomplete 
scientific understanding behind it! Ron Baalke's response was surprisingly 
restrained, and also entirely correct: there is *NO* guarantee of a meteor 
storm in '98, nor in '99 for that matter. Profs. Jenniskens et al have models 
which make fairly strong predictions of storm *probabilities* at certain 
longitudes. But these predictions have large (published) error bars, and yet 
larger uncertainties as far as we observers are concerned.

And one final point, Victor: you did not read the news releases closely enough 
(or with sufficient knowledge)... The danger to artificial satellites from any 
putative Leonid storm is NOT due to a "bombardment of debris": rather, it is 
due to the possibility of extremely high levels of ionized particles in the 
Earth's upper atmosphere that might occur during a storm.

Even a storm of 1833 intensity (which is NOT predicted by any current models) 
would still have densities on the order of one sub-gram particle per N square 
kilometers per hour: not much of a threat.

DISCLAIMER: All the above is based on *my* limited understanding of current LEO 
storm-component models... Those more knowledgeable (and certainly Dr. Baalke) 
please feel free to correct me where I err!

Clear skies to all!
Lew Gramer



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