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(meteorobs) Re: Leonid max



As last year, many are asking the best time and place to watch for
Leonids. 

As a (very) casual observer, the lesson I drew from last year is that
the best place is anywhere outside (but as dark as possible helps) and
the best time is whenever the radiant is above the horizon, or not too
far below, and the sky is at least partly clear, for as many nights
around the expected peak as you can manage.

This is on the basis that the predictions are *only* predictions, so the
more time you spend watching the sky the more chance you have of getting
lucky - wherever you are. We seem to have detailed analyses of why last
year's Leonids went off the way they did, and I have no reason to doubt
their accuracy, but they *are* after the event. I don't believe that a
*consensus* of last year's predictions (as reflected in postings to
meteorobs) would have led observers to expect what actually happened.
(Individual predictors may have got it right - I don't recall.) Of
course, the data from last year has improved our understanding, so
predictions should in principle be better this year, but they surely
can't approach certainty.

I don't want to offend the experts, and please put me right (gently, if
possible) if I'm missing something here, but should we really be
encouraging people to think of this as an event that happens at a
definitely predictable time in a predictable part of the world? It gives
me no pleasure at all to be the only one among my friends and relatives
who saw last year's outburst because I was the only one who got up the
night before the media said it would happen.

Keep watching the skies!

David Cross



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