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RE: (meteorobs) Re: Leonids meteor shower



1.  There is some concern about the very thin commercial solar arrays 
in that an unusual amount of micrometeroids could rip them.  Yes, we 
provide for many years of damage, but how many years of damage will 
the Leonids dust put on?  That is the question.
2.  The long duration exposure experiment came back a mess.  Looked
like someone had taken a shotgun to it....

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From:  vladimir lukic
Sent:  Wednesday, May 06, 1998 3:00 PM
To:  Meteor Observing Mailing List
Subject:  (meteorobs) Re: Leonids meteor shower

> Someone is worried enough because they are turning the Hubble around and 
> away from the incoming shower of particles to avoid damage. Interesting 
> and the kind of statement that sell news papers.

Last week I gave one HST-related optics problem to my students, and one
guy who had hard times solving it made a joke that problem is useless, as
'HST is going to be destroyed soon, anyway'. At that moment I realized
that more than half of the students 'knew' that HST will 'definitely be
damaged' in November, and some of them were smart enough to generalize
this to ALL weather, communication etc. satellites!!!

I had REAL problem explaining them (what I believe is) the real situation.
Some of them were almost disappointed... ;)

However, nobody was really scared by possibility of major impact with
Earth (at least not by this occasion :) ).

Vladimir