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(meteorobs) Strong Leonid Activity Nov 16/17 ZAYGE

Meteor observations for the night of Nov 16/17, 1998
George Zay

Last night, Robert Lunsford and myself watched the weather forecast and didn't
like it, so we decided on a road trip to the desert. Our Destination was a
desert location in S. California about 20 miles from Yuma, Arizona called
Ogilby. We left around 5:30 pm from my house and head for the observatory
first to pick up our observing gear. We got to Ogilby at around 9:15 pm under
cloudy skies with a few holes. Knowing that it was worse at home, we decided
to try here so that maybe we can see something. After setting up, we started
on a 1.5 hour nap. At 11 pm I looked at the sky and it was a lot better than
when we got there...but still hazy somewhat. I told bob that I wanted to sleep
for perhaps another half hour. Well..dot it wasn't no more than a few minutes of
puttering around did we see the first of many leonid earth grazers.
Well...more sleep went out the window. By the time I actually got started at
11:15 pm, the skies completely cleared up. The clouds just simply dissolved
right in front of us. Looking around, it was clear in all directions. My LM
was near 6.0 for 4 Teff hours. We began our recordings and photographic
attempts. Leonid activity was definitely a lot better than a normal Perseid
peak and was either equaled to or better than a real good Geminid peak...that
is for my eyes. I recorded a total of 339 meteors of which 310 were leonids,
13 N. Taurids, 1 S. Taurid and 15 sporadics. Different from last nights
efforts, there was a wider variety of leonid magnitudes. The dimmer meteors
were present ...which seemingly last night were a rare commodity. Still there
were a lot of leonid fireballs...again 25 of them. But the brightest were a
pair of -7's, a -6, three -5, nine -4, ten -3's...but no real eyepoppers like
last nights -15. Some persistent trains were also very long. I had my stop
watch on these guys for easy in figuring them out. A -5 produced 6 minute
train. Another -5 produced a train lasting 4.5 minutes. A -6 produced a 5
minute train. And a -7 also had a 5 minute train. It got to be comical in that
I was timing the durations of two long lasting trains at once. 

Distribution for the other leonid magnitudes are: -2(28), -1(33), 0(64),
+1(45), +2(61), +3(31), +4(17), +5(1). This gave me an overall mean magnitude
for the leonids a +0.45. 

My hourly rates for the leonids are as follows with Teff being near 1.0 for
the first 4 hourly periods. Time is in Universal Time. LM is shown also:

7h13 - 8h15UT      35 Leonids with LM at 6.0
8h15 - 9h18UT      77 Leonids with LM at 6.0
9h18 - 10h24UT     99 Leonids with LM at 6.0
10h24 - 11h26UT   83 Leonids with LM at 5.4
11h26 - 11h47UT    15 Leonids with LM at 5.1
(Note some dead time due to camera operations has been subtracted to give me
Teff's at 1.0)

Definitely showing the dimmer meteor's presence now. 

Meteor colors were present. Most of the early leonids had a distinct orange
color. Then as the radiant climbed higher, orange became a lesser seen color
with blue, green or white showing up. I did see one meteor a very deep red in
color..dot it was as red as a fire engine. 

Then at about 3:30 am...the cirrus started to come in again...by 4 am we had
to stop and that was our show for the night. On our way home it was still dark
with a few holes in the sky, we can still see an occasional leonid while
driving. There was no indication of a storm occuring in our location as dawn
approached. I hope to observe tonight again...but it really looks iffy this
time. The weather doesn't look very cooperative in any direction as of around
noon. But from what we did see, I feel very grateful to have under our belts. 

Also a small note for those who are following Marco Langbroek's and Koen
Miskotte's adventures in China for the Leonid peak...Bob and I received a
postcard from them today in China. They had met up with Dr. Jin Zhu from the
Beijing Observatory. They said that their observational site is at an
elevation of 3200 meters. At this time of year, I suspect that they might be
experiencing some mighty cold air.  
George Zay
Observing from Ogilby, in the S. California Desert.
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