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(meteorobs) Summary of Leonid Activity as seen from Northern England
Here, sitting in bed, recovering from three nights of lost sleep, I've been
going over downloaded Meteorobs digests, and after reading the rather
depressing accounts of List members' frustrated attempts to view the Leonids
from the eastern US, I thought I'd write up a summary of my experiences for
people who were completely let down - NOT to gloat, just to, hopefully, let
you all get a feeling of what it was like... so, no scientific results, no
jargon, just one person's experiences. I hope no-one is offended or upset by
this long posting, but as we've all been subjected to unwanted spam on the
List this last week - no, I DON'T want to review your "adult products", thank
you!! - I figure at least a few people won't mind..?
First of all, I have a suggestion to make, which I hope will be taken up.
Everyone agrees there was no 1998 Leonid Storm, but it was pretty impressive,
for a short time... so I'd like to, humbly, suggest we christen the event the
"1998 Leonid Downpour"..? :-)
Okay, so what was it like here in the north of England? Well, basically
nothing happened until the evening of Monday November 16th. Although the sky
was beautifully clear for a few late evenings before that, I can't honestly
say that I am sure any of the meteors I saw were Leonids, so my Leonid
experience began at five to midnight on the evening of the 16th, when my
clock alarm blsted me awake, suggesting I check the sky for stars - seeing
there were lots of them I bolted out bed and got dressed in Guinness Book of
World Record time, and within ten minutes me, my binoculars and Walkman were
all crunching over the frosty grass along the banks of the river, heading
determinedly towards my favoured observing site, the small field in the
shadow of the centuries old castle I've mentioned before. Even as I walked
down I was seeing bright meteors streaking overhead, and more than once I
was so busy looking up I almost walked into a tree or broke both knees by
colliding with a bench, but eventually I reached my "place" and, Walkman on
(tip: if you're observing on your own take a Walkman or a pocket radio,
listening to the music, or other human voices, helps keep you awake and
alert, and if there's a shower on it's good fun to hear a DJ saying how many
calls they're getting from people amazed by the "meteorites"!) I settled down
to watch The Show...
After just a few minutes I began to get a sense, a gut feeling, that I was
witnessing something *very* special. There were no "meteors" as I knew them,
only fireballs: bright, blinding things which looked just like speeded-up
fireworks as they lanced across the sky. There were many colours, including
violets, a couple of reds, but most seemed to be an arc-lamp white-blue or a
brittle, icy green, like distress flares jabbing down from the heavens,
unbelievably, impossibly reflected in the river flowing between me and the
castle. And the trains! I'd never, ever seen anything like them! They seemed
to linger in the sky above me for an age! Usually during a shower - like many
of you, I guess - I raise my binoculars just in time to see the train of a
bright meteor dissolve before my eyes, but these seemed determined to survive
as long as possible. Through my trusty 10x50s they looked to me like lengths
of green cotton hanging in the sky, contorting and curling in the upper
winds...
After an hour of standing there watching the stars fall out of the sky - that
was really what it felt like - I realised that I was going to be up for a
while, and that I just wouldn't be able to stand for the hours ahead without
suffering agony in my neck, so I made the decision to hide my gear under a
bench and go back to my house for a deck chair. A ten minute walk back across
the even crunchier grass... and then back to my field again, deck chair under
my arm, much to the amazement of passing motorists..! Retrieved my bag, and
settled down into my chair, facing Leo as it reared up from the horizon
between the Plough and the ruined castle... hit "play" on my Walkman, Shania
Twain started singing to me, and I wriggled down into my chair and
watched...
I enjoyed an hour and a half more of clear sky, and the meteors just kept
coming... and coming... and coming. Very few were seen "out of the corner of
my eye" as is usually the case during a shower - almost all of them slapped
me across the face and shouted "Look at me! Woooh!!" as they skimmed across
the sky. It was stunning, humbling even, to sit there and see flaming jewels
rain from the heavens. Garnets, emeralds, sapphires, all of them bright
enough to put the brightest stars to shame. The frosty sky was full of many
sights which usually stop me in my tracks - the Pleiades twinkling away like
tiny ice crystals; Orion dominating the sky above the castle, paying silent
tribute to the soldiers and knights who had once lived, fought and died
there; the twin salt-piles of the Double Cluster almost overhead - but I saw
none of them; all I saw was one fireball after another...
If course, it was too good to last - the Universe only has so many favours to
grant! - and at 02.30, as predicted, the cloud started to roll in from the
west. But even as it slid overhead and covered the sky I could still see
fireballs shining through the it, flashes and flares above it, so I hung
around a while longer. But eventually the cloud thickened enough to blot
everything out, so I went back to bed at 03.00UT, my alarm set for an hour
later in the hope the cloud would have cleared...
... peering sleepily out my window I found it had, a little, and I headed
down to the river again, only half as far this time. There were fist-sized
gaps here and there, and slits in the cloud cover which drifted painfully
slowly overhead.... but the meteors were still there! Still coming! And, if
anything, they seemed even brighter than before, and I stood in silence
watching the clouds flashing and flaring quickly, just like the footage
you've seen of lightning storms as seen from the shuttle... it was as if the
Mothership from "Close Encounters" was on final approach, the only thing
missing was the little red "Sprite" UFO buzzing me...! But the cloud
eventually thickened again, so back home I went, again, to gran another
hour's sleep, fully dressed still, no point wasting time...
... an hour later: pulled open the curtains to look at the sky... and to
quote a certain astronaut from the year 2001: "Oh my god... it's full of
stars..!" The cloud had gone, the Plough was balanced on the tip of its
handle... yes!!
Stumbled back to the river, to stand again on white, frost-covered grass, and
found the show was STILL going on... by 05.00UT Leo was high in the sky,
standing over the lights of my town, and it was raining meteors on the people
sleeping below. I leaned against a hoarfrost-bright bench and just stared,
with a stupid, smug grin on my face, at the sky, watching one fireball after
another spear out of Leo and slash across Orion, or the Plough... it seemed
to me that the reds and golds had gone, leaving behind predominantly
magnesium blue/white and spearmint-green, flaring fireballs, though one
lavender-coloured -6 left me gasping with its sheer beauty. As for their
brightnesses, well, I'm no hardened veteran, and I make no claims about being
a "scientific observer," but the vast majority of the fireballs were far
brighter than Venus at its brightest, and the green fireballs seemed the
brightest of all...
Inevitably the cloud returned, and this time it was a tsunami-like,
impenetrable bank of what I call "Forget It" heavy cloud that wouldn't even
have let the Sun shine through it, so, reluctantly, I headed home again and
waited for my lift to collect me to take me to work... but even then my
morning show wasn't over, because at 06.30, staring out the car window at the
finger-thick gap of clear sky left by the cloud I saw another, brilliant
green fireball, just to the right of a fingernail-thin crescent Moon...
And that was the last Leonid I saw. As I sat in an office at work and gave a
radio interview, outside the cloud was getting thicker by the minute, and
that was how it stayed the whole day, completely thwarting all attempts to
enjoy the predicted "peak". My late evening Meteor Watch at the school was
abandoned, although around 30 people still came, hoping to see something, and
when I got up at midnight after a much-needed nap the sky was a featureless
orange dome of low cloud lit by streetlights, and even a 3.30am dash
eastwards down the highway in pursuit of weather-expert predicted clearer
skies was in vain, as we saw rain drops and not meteors falling from above...
And now it's Wednesday evening, and the talking head on the News is talking
about the "Leonid Damp Squib", about how it was a huge disappointment, about
how people in Japan saw nothing. I can't agree, not personally. It's clear
from the postings on this List that although many people were disappointed
many others had a wild time, and I'm glad about that. We've all had enough
disappointments before, all been cloudd out on the nights of showers, we've
paid our dues, we Deserved this!
And okay, so maybe there was no storm, maybe the meteors didn't fall like
snowflakes, but anyone who saw even part of what I saw will never forget
it... and I think, like others, that the Lion will Roar next year as history
repeats itself and a Storm follows a Year Of Fireballs. I'll be living in the
States by then, so hopefully I'll get to observe the show with some of you
whose names I have come to recognise on this List. My tally for this year was
300 or so. I look forward to adding at least one zero on the end of that,
next year.
1998: no Storm, but I enjoyed getting soaked during the Leonid Downpour! :-)
Over and out from the UK,
Stuart Atkinson.
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