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(meteorobs) Leonids Report from Sydney, Australia
Hey everyone,
Just a quick warning to some people that this report does not contain any
accurate scientific data, although it is an accurate account of my trip to
see the Leonids last night. The WILD weather I experienced prevented me
from making any useful observations/photographs.
As I mentioned in my introduction a few days ago, Sydney has been
experiencing some REALLY bad weather lately. Anyway, on the day of the
18th, the weather changed every hour- cloudy/rainy one minute, then blue
skies and sunshine the next. Although by the time night fell, we
experienced some MAJOR storms and gusty winds, the worst in a long, long time.
My observing site was just south of Royal National Park (just south of
Sydney), from a lookout overlooking the sea. I arrived at around 9 or 10pm.
It was pouring with rain, and was so windy that the car was shaking. It was
really funny though, because despite the heavy wind/rain, every so often
there would be a little patch of sky that would be clear, and I could see
many, many stars. I had fallen asleep in the car, and woke up again at
around 3am-- no gaps in the clouds this time. I drove further inland to get
away from the wind, and the clouds started to clear in a small portion of
the sky (although the wind and rain continued). Looking up through the
windscreen, I saw a bright (-4) leonid streak right through Orion, and
cover around 40 degrees of sky. It was a lovely greenish colour. Following
that 2 smaller ones were seen.
I headed back to my observing site, put on a raincoat, got out of the car,
and stood in the pouring rain and wind to watch a small portion of sky. The
time is now around 4am, and I could see Orion, Gemini, and Leo. Thats about
it. However, in this very small portion of sky, in the next half an hour, I
saw around 40-50 Leonids! Amazing, it was pouring with rain, I was nearly
getting blown over by the wind, and I could still observe these meteors.
Now to break down the observations further, I would say that about 80% were
a greenish/yellow colour, and the others were a bright orange. Also, around
75 0.000000e+00ft smoke trails, lasting no longer than a second or two at most.
Nearly all of these meteors would have been 0 or -1 magnitudes, with a few
on either side. After this "peak" had ended, I only saw 1 or 2 in the next
5 minutes, and then the clouds covered the whole thing up.
In conclusion, I could see a tiny portion of the sky, from an extremely
wet, windy, stormy, cloudy location. Despite this, I witnessed around 40-50
bright meteors, over around 20-30 mins, easily more than 1 per minute.
Whilst mostly bright green, there was also a few nice oranges Leonids. And
nearly all of them left small smoke trails. I do not know whether I am
happy or sad-- I guess I'm glad I saw something, but I could not make any
useful observation reports, or take any of the 3 films I had planned to.
And I cannot begin to imagine HOW GOOD it must have been to be under clear
skies-- if I could see this many in such poor conditions, the storm must
have been amazing from Alice Springs, or other similar sites in Asia.
Until next time,
Geoff.
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