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Re: (meteorobs) 2001 Leonid maximum
Dear Everyone,
It has taken me a few days to recover here, not necessarily from the
onslaught of Leonid meteors, but from the determination to see
meteors despite mostly cloudy skies. Five members of my group deserve
some sort of award for persistence as we spent about 6 hours watching
Leonids at times when the LM was certainly worse than -2 because not
even Jupiter was visible. Nevertheless, I personally saw 39 Leonids
and one sporadic. At least I think I saw 39 Leonids, as there were
five instances when the sky lit up, but the actual meteors which
caused these flares were not seen. I am assuming these five flashes
were caused by Leonids.
[Joe Rao, if you are reading this, please do not read this next paragraph]
This whole incident has seriously destroyed my confidence in
meteorologists. We were prepared to drive if the forecast was cloudy,
but three hours before we began observing, both our local
meteorologists and the weather channel were still saying we were
going to have partly cloudy skies. I even e-mailed a gentleman at the
St. Louis weather bureau at that time and was told we would have no
more than 50 percent cloud cover for the whole morning, with the
thickest clouds toward our western horizon. We knew that if we drove
we would loose several members of our group, so we were going to
settle for partly cloudy conditions. When the skies totally clouded
over at 7:00 UT, I ran inside to check the latest infrared satellite
sequence. What they revealed was a large eastward extending "bump" in
the cloud mass that was primarily moving from Texas and Oklahoma
toward the North-northeast. This bump came right over us and kept us
pretty well socked in. At that point, driving was no longer an
option, because it would have taken us too much time to reach skies
better than our own.
[Okay, Joe, you can read from here on]
What I will say is that, although we missed out on the really big
show, we still had a lot of fun. We knew the meteors we were seeing
were truly spectacular for us to be able to see them.
So my report is below. The times of each "event" are given. An
estimation of Teff is probably useless, because I have no idea how
thick the clouds were above us.
Date: Nov 18, 2001 06:00-12:05 UT
Site: St. Jacob, Illinois, USA 89d 46m 05s W, 38d 42m 50s N
Observer: Gary W. Kronk
06:08 LEO 1 2s train
06:12 LEO -3 2s train; long-trailed
06:14 LEO 2
06:21 LEO
06:21 LEO 0 3s train; orange
06:23 LEO 2 orange tint
[06:25 clouds began appearing from the south to west horizons]
06:28 LEO 1 0.5s train
06:30 LEO low southern horizon behind clouds
06:30 LEO 0
[07:00 completely cloudy with overhead LM=2]
08:07 LEO? large flash behind clouds
08:25 LEO -2 blue-white
08:27 LEO -4 near Jupiter through thin clouds
08:31 LEO -3 through thick clouds
08:35 LEO through clouds
[08:55 partial clearing in region of Auriga to Canis Major; LM=3]
09:01 LEO -2
09:03 LEO -3 short-trailed
09:03 LEO -6 through Canis Minor; 60s train to naked eye
through hazy sky where
Procyon was barely visible (longer in binoculars)
[09:05 thicker clouds: Jupiter and Capella only objects seen]
09:18 LEO -1
09:23 LEO? bright flash in east where thick clouds are present
09:24 LEO 0
09:27 LEO -4 disappeared in thick clouds
09:29 LEO 0
09:30 LEO 1 short-trailed
09:34 LEO -1 due south
09:51 LEO short-trailed near "sickle" only Jupiter visible
through clouds
[09:55 No stars or planets visible hereafter]
10:16 LEO? completely cloudy skies lit up
10:22 LEO heading north through clouds
10:22 LEO extremely bright, blue-white, and lit up clouds
surrounding it.
10:24 LEO brilliant and heading northward. Lit up clouds
as it traveled.
10:31 LEO seen through clouds with brief flash at end.
10:32 LEO headed due east
10:37 SPOR bluish tint; very rapid; appeared at zenith and
headed southward.
10:40 LEO bluish-white; heading east
10:40 LEO heading northeast
10:42 LEO nearly stationary
10:42 LEO? flash in northeast
10:58 LEO heading toward southwest
11:32 LEO? flash toward southeast
11:38 LEO? blinding flash
12:01 LEO overhead, with flash; some twilight
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