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(meteorobs) Re: [IMO-News] Leonids 17/18 november 2000


I was lucky enough to observe the Leonids in crystal clear skies from the
High Atlas mountains in Morrocco with Felix Betonville and his girlfriend.
The site was at 2600-m and even at sunset the temperature was several
degrees below zero. The trip to the site was arranged for the last day of
the IAU "Site 2000" conference, although of the 60 or so people on the
trip, only the three of us braved the cold to observe seriously.

Felix found an excellent site on the grass behind the hotel and some
sunbeds(!) for observing on. The hotel staff agreed to switch off most of
the exterior lights. We went to bed early to try to grab some sleep before
observing and set our alarms for 2am, although excitment and
anticipation assured that we were all awake before then. We lugged three
sunbeds down from the sun terrace to the back of the hotel.

As Felix set up his low light level camera we got our eyes "in" for about
10 minutes, getting used to the light and to the cold. As we did so it was
obvious that the activity was quite high, but not exceptional, with a
goodly number of bright meteors and many fine trains. The air was very
transparent and, despite the Moon, the limiting magnitude was close to 6.2

At around 2:30am we were seeing slightly over 2 meteors per minute. Our
impression though was of a gradual decline in activity over the following
hour. Both Felix and I felt that activity actually declined around 03:44UT
(looking at my 5 minute rates that feeling is confirmed, but evidently
not by other observers!).

Almost all the brighter (mag +3, or brighter) meteors were trained,
although none were especially bright, there were plenty of magnitude 0, -1
and -2 meteors. By 04:30UT we agreed that activity was definitely lower
and the cold started to penetrate. Shortly before 5am we agreed to stop
after one particularly quiet 5 minute interval with just 2 meteors. Felix
stayed behind to phone his impressions to The Netherlands whilst I
staggered in to defrost a bit. Felix though was convinced to stay out
by the voice 3000km away and
saw a significant rise in activity around 05:30UT, to around 18 meteors
per 5 minutes from an average of about 7-8 previously.

Although there was obviously no storm, there was obviously good sub-storm
activity. It was a wonderful night and a great setting and fantastic to
observe with two IMO veterans who had previously only been 5-letter codes
in IMO shower activity reports.

Mark Kidger (KIDMA)

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