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(meteorobs) Fwd: Leonids 2001 Trip Story




Below is an interesting Leonid story told by a well known local ATM, amateur
astronomer, and light pollution fighter from Baltimore, Maryland. Fowarded
to meteorobs without his permission. 

GWG

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Leonid Trip 2001 - Forrest Hamilton - CSC/Space Telescope Science Institute

   The Leonids of 2001 were great!  Be sure to check out a few pics that I
took (see links below).  That's the short report.  If you want a more in
depth trip report read on.

   The weather forecast for our target viewing location looked favorable
as of Saturday afternoon, Nov. 17th.  The night before there was some fog in
the area near Mathias, WV
(ftp://ftp.stscidot edu/outside-access/out.going/hamilton/mathias_wv.gif),
which is where we were heading.  My friend George Gliba owns a nice cabin
(ftp://ftp.stscidot edu/outside-access/out.going/hamilton/cabin.jpg) out there
and we had the privilege of viewing the Leonids from this site.  Myself,
Jackie, and Alex headed out at 3pm for the ~170 mile trek.  Mike gave some
lame excuse about having to get some homework done as his reason for not
coming on the ride out into dark-sky country.

  We arrived at ~7:20pm EST.  The sky was somewhat hazy and there was a
distinct smell of burning leaves in the air; no doubt from the brush fires
in the Shenandoah Valley.  The temperatures were downright pleasant
considering this was November and we were at an elevation of 2800 feet.  The
Leonid radiant (the point in the sky where the meteors appear to come from)
would not rise until ~11:40pm, so in the meantime we looked at various
deepsky objects with George's 20" telescope until the show was to begin.

  The first indication that we were in for a good show came shortly after
11:40pm when George picked up a faint Leonid grazer about 5 degrees above
the eastern horizon.  It traveled about 120 degrees of sky before
dissipating.  Wow!  Grazers are meteors that are just skimming the upper
atmosphere which only occur when the radian is at a low altitude. An
appetizer for things to come.  Not long after several bolides (bright
meteors) were spotted in the northeast in the Big Dipper asterism.  Cool!
Activity at this point was still fairly low with a Leonid visible once every
minute or two.

  In the meantime we continued to look at several objects with George's 20"
Newtonian (ftp://ftp.stscidot edu/outside-access/out.going/hamilton/newt.jpg).
Saturn was tremendous through the 20".  The colors and detail were something
to behold.  I took some video of it with Jackie's camcorder.  While I was
having a look at one of my favorite galaxies, Messier 82 in Ursa Major, with
the 20" scope a medium bright Leonid shot through my field of view.  What
are the odds...

  Through most of the night, there was a low level yellowish glow on our
eastern and southeastern horizon.  No doubt emissions from the light sullied
lands to our east.  By 3am I had noticed that this glow was essentially
gone.  Little did I realize that fog had rolled in over the coastal cities
to leave us in West Virginia with exceptionally dark skies.  The later it
got, the clearer the view became.

  By 4am the activity was definitely picking up, except for Alex.  We made
the mistake of letting Alex take a nap around 2:30am.  Any and all attempts
to make him cognizant of his surroundings at 4am failed.  Later in the day,
say at 1pm, he stated that he was mad at me for not waking him up to see the
spectacle about to occur.  Sigh.  He did get a glorious look at the Orion
Nebula through the 20" though.

  By 5am we were seeing a meteor every couple of seconds and they were
bright suckers too.  I took several 10 minute exposures with a Canon AE-1
mounted on a tripod.  I used Kodak Max 800 film with the 50mm lens set at
f/1.8.  Here's the best of the lot:

  ftp://ftp.stscidot edu/outside-access/out.going/hamilton/tree.jpg
  ftp://ftp.stscidot edu/outside-access/out.going/hamilton/polar.jpg

  The polar shot contains at least 16 Leonids.  The short streaks in the
images are stars that moved due to the Earth's rotation during the
exposures.  The Leonid meteors are the longer reddish streaks aligned in the
same general direction.

  George did some meteor counts from 2am till dawn.  He uses a tape recorder
to record the number, time, and brightness of the meteors.  At one point
during the night, a bear interrupted him, which he scarred off with a growl
of his own.  All this while dealing with a broken lawn chair to boot. In the
last hour of viewing, from 5am - 6am, we had to have seen in excess of 1000
Leonids!  Sometimes 3 or 4 at a time.

  All in all it was an exceptional night.  Looking forward to next year when
we will be encountering the 1767 trail left by Comet Temple-Tuttle head-on
(see http://www.arm.acdot uk/leonid/dust2002.html).  Promises to be very good
in spite of a full Moon, so mark your calendars for Monday, November 19,
2002, 4-6am EST.

 Forrest

The archive and Web site for our list is at http://www.meteorobs.org
If you are interested in complete links on the 2001 LEONIDS, see:
http://www.meteorobs.org/storms.html
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