[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
(meteorobs) Leonids 17./18.2001 Mt. Lemmon (AZ) Storm level activity
Hello from Mt. Lemmon!
Just finishing a great night with a toast of champagne, here inside the
dome of the 40-inch telescope at MLOF. The original group (David Holman,
Jim Richardson, Tom Kucharsky , Jure Zakrajsek, Javor Kac and Jure
Atanackov) were joined tonight by none other than Bob Lunsford himself. We
spent the afternoon sleeping and watching videos.
We started observing around 7 UT with the radiant still low and a layer
of cirrus lowering LMs to around 4.0. Nevertheless we saw several (10-20)
great Leonid grazers, mostly negative magnitudes. The rate then slowly
climbed and the sky cleared a bit. We hit 100/h around 9h UT with skies
still partly covered by the @#%^* cirrus. Luckily, it cleared by 10h UT
when the Leonids really started going. We hit 20/min around 10:10 UT. The
rate climbed to a peak of 40-50 per minute in a pleateau peak between
10:45 and 11:15UT. Then the rates slowly dropped of, but we were still
seeing 4-8 per minute when twilight set in around 13h UT.
Overall the meteors were bright: Jure A. recorded around 10 fireballs
beteween -6m and -8m plus over 20 minor fireballs to -3m. Several long
duration trains up to 15 min. Most observers recorded over 1500 meteors in
5h teff.
More details later,
Clear skies
Jure Z
The archive and Web site for our list is at http://www.meteorobs.org
If you are interested in complete links on the upcoming LEONIDS, see:
http://www.meteorobs.org/storms.html
To stop getting email from the 'meteorobs' list, use the Web form at:
http://www.meteorobs.org/subscribe.html
References: