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(meteorobs) My Leonid MAC Experience

Hi All! This is a quick overview of my experiences last week. I’m 
already back at work but unfortunately my brain is still lost in another 
time zone between here and Spain! I probably left out many details but 
it’s the best I can do in my current condition. I tried to write this so 
that my non astronomical friends could also understand. If anyone has 
any questions I’ll be happy to reply ASAP. Pictures should be available 
soon (I only took video). When I hear of their availability I’ll let you 
know.

Bob Lunsford


The 2002 MAC campaign officially started on Thursday November 14 with 
everyone meeting in the town of Lancaster. We spent nearly the entire 
day obtaining clearances for us and our vehicles at Edwards Air Force 
Base. There were also briefings with the flight crew detailing our 
flight path and the goals for the flight and safety issues. It was 
exciting to discover that our pilot for this leg and the entire journey 
to Spain and back would be none other than Gordon Fullerton, the pilot 
of Shuttle Mission III aboard the Enterprise. We all knew we were in 
good hands. That evening we took our first flight on board the DC-8. The 
jet was very comfortable and catered exactly to our needs. Extremely 
clear optical windows had been installed in place of the normal plastic 
to allow our instruments a clear view of the sky. To our dismay though 
the windows frosted over shortly into the flight, as they were not 
getting adequate ventilation. This would be a big problem to all 
experimenters, just not our flux team.

The next day back in Lancaster Pete Gural and I visited every Radio 
Shack in town and bought CPU fans. We only came up with 8 so we were 
forced to buy an additional 3 handheld fans from Walgreen’s. We wanted 
to make sure the windows stayed clear in case the efforts by NASA’s 
technicians did not resolve the problem. We arrived back at the base 
during the afternoon and prepared for our evening flight to Offutt 
Field, near Omaha, Nebraska. During the flight the windows remained 
clear and the fans were not needed. Our main objective of the flight was 
to determine our field of view so that so that the total area of the sky 
each camera exhibited could be determined. We would draw our star field 
on to a Brno star chart and then calculate the area of each drawing. 
Looking through the goggles was a bit like being in the last row of a 
walk-in theater. It gave us a large screen to view plus there were dark, 
blank areas along the sides and down the front. Stars down to magnitude 
5 (pretty faint!) were easily seen despite the bright moon. Star 
patterns were a bit strange though as the red sensitive intensifiers 
displayed red stars much brighter than they normally were seen to the 
naked eye. For instance, zero magnitude Vega was in my field but was not 
the brightest star. The brightest star was actually 2.2 magnitude 
Eltanin (Gamma Draconis) which is spectral type K5 (deep orange).

We arrived in cool (33F) Nebraska near midnight CST and had a long bus 
ride across town to our hotel. After we woke the next morning we took a 
long hike to the closest shopping mall to get some last minute shopping 
in before the long flight to Spain. We took off again around dusk and 
were intently observing as soon as possible. For this leg I switched to 
a low angle camera since Chris Crawford was having difficulty making 
magnitude estimates of meteors so close to the horizon. I had no problem 
with this except when the jet banked toward the left I had to quit 
counting since the ground was in my field of view. At approximately 5:48 
UT we had our first excitement of the trip. An extremely bright fireball 
passed into the upper portion of my field. It was first seen by Chris 
but he was not wearing his headset to alert the crew. As soon as the 
initial shock wore off I quickly tried to notify everyone that we had a 
bright train on the left side of the plane. Unfortunately by the time 
everyone was aware of the situation the train had faded. This was good 
practice though and we would certainly be ready for the next one. It was 
interesting to see the angle of the Leonids passing though our fields 
change as the night progressed. While overall rates were low, there was 
still enough activity to keep us interested.

We touched down in overcast Madrid near 11am local time. It would not be 
until 1pm we finally reached our hotel room. As in all the military 
airports we visited, security was tight. I slept as soon as could and 
woke just in time for dinner. Since the skies were cloudy we had the 
choice of going out to the plane for 4 hours or just staying in the 
hotel. I decided to go to the plane to help Dave and Pete with the 
charts. There was one particular field we could not figure out. We had 
spent a lot of time on this the previous night and still could not 
figure it out. I reviewed the tape again noted the positions of the 
other camera fields. There was a bright star off to the right but 
nothing else was familiar. It turned out that bright star was none other 
than Polaris and that the “dipper” was just out of the field of view. 
Had the dipper been include it would have been easy. Anyway, we had a 
productive 4 hours and then it was off to bed at 4am. Some folks took 
this time to tour the city but I decided to get some sleep.

I woke some 4 hours later near 8am. Pete, Dave and I decided to tour the 
city. There’s nothing like using the “Metro” at rush hour! We had heard 
of a particular spot to go shopping so we ordered tickets for that 
destination. The only problem though, halfway there the train stopped 
and everyone got off. Nothing like being lost in Madrid! We spent a few 
more full fares and ended up totally lost. Here are three guys who can 
read star charts of the heavens but cannot decipher a transit map! Well 
we finally figured out which lines were headed in and out of the city so 
we knew we could get back to our hotel eventually. We than struck out on 
foot and did some touring and shopping. Downtown was a nice area with 
many photographic opportunities. It was much more impressive than the 
suburbs where our hotel was located. After developing blisters on our 
feet (at least I did!) it was time to head back to the hotel. We got 
there without a hitch. It was time for another nap. We rested until 
dinnertime. When we woke it was raining and we felt sorry for anyone who 
traveled to Spain to view the shower. After a filling meal it was time 
to pack and get ready for our big trip back across the Atlantic.

We were all back on the plane by 2am and ready for some great activity. 
The plane was loaded to the max with people, equipment and fuel for our 
long trip. We would be encountering strong head winds so it was decided 
we would take off an hour early to make sure we were still in darkness 
when the second maximum occurred. Unfortunately our sister craft “FISTA” 
was having trouble getting off the ground. First of all one of the 
engines balked at starting. Once that was resolved then there were 
electrical problems. We waited as long as we could before deciding  we 
had to take off solo. It took nearly the entire runway to get airborne 
(52 seconds exactly). I got a good laugh from the mission director Bob 
Curry saying we “were thundering down the runway like a heard of turtles.”
Since we were so heavy it took quite awhile to get above the clouds. 
Several of us could not log on immediately as there was intermittent 
clouds in our field of view. About a half hour into the flight there was 
a loud cheer as we heard that FISTA finally was also airborne. We were 
too far apart to do any coordinated high definition work between the two 
planes but all other experiments could still be undertaken.

Meteor activity was evident as soon as the cameras were activated. 
Unfortunately Dave Nugent’s camera was pointed directly at the moon so 
he spent a good part of the first few hours helping everyone else out. 
My camera was aimed toward Canis Major and Puppis. I did not have the 
world’s best intensifier, as the bottom center portion of the screen was 
more sensitive than the rest of the view. I had Dave Nugent adjust the 
gain to achieve the best possible results. I left the gain toward the 
high side in order to see the most activity. We were all seeing several 
Leonids per minute and occasional bright ones. From what I recall rates 
did not kick into high gear until 3:45 UT. From then and for the next 30 
minutes I was seeing Leonids passing through my field of view every few 
seconds. Near the top of the hour there were several simultaneous 
Leonids and on one occasion there were three visible simultaneously. 
While there were occasional bright Leonids, a great majority of the 
activity appeared to be of the third and fourth magnitude (a bit on the 
faint side). In fact the brightest meteor seen during this period was a 
long-lasting Taurid. I had a bright train early in the session but it 
paled in comparison to the one I reported on the 17th. It seems that 
others were seeing better trains so I kept quiet.  Shortly after the 
peak those on the right side of the plane (facing north) became excited 
as bright trains began drifting into their field of view. These suddenly 
became quite numerous, so numerous in fact that they thought that they 
were clouds. We had not seen clouds for quite some time now were suppose 
to be well above all cloud layers. The video team switched their main 
monitor to the “all sky” camera and it was then obvious we were seeing 
aurora. We all took short “time outs” to see this awesome sight on the 
monitor a few rows up from our team. Within an hour I did not need the 
monitor to see the aurora as it had reached my far south-facing camera. 
Nearly the entire sky was ablaze with shimmering aurora. It was an 
awesome sight, especially for someone like me who has only seen faint 
glows low in the north on rare occasions. The Leonids were also active 
during all this excitement with several meteors appearing each minute. 
My filed of view had now shifted eastward into Hydra and Crater. As we 
reached 10:00 UT and even 10:15 there was no enhancement of rates so it 
seemed that the second maximum would be late. It was toward the bottom 
of the hour that rates again kicked into high gear. Rates climbed 
steadily and peaked near 10:50 UT. It was near this time I saw five 
simultaneous Leonids and seven within a one second period. Although this 
peak seemed a bit stronger than the first, it was also a bit dimmer with 
no negative magnitude Leonids being recalled. Once again a great 
majority of the Leonid activity was of third and fourth magnitude. A 
noticeable drop in rates had occurred by 11:15 and activity was down to 
a few Leonids every minute by 11:30 UT.

It was still dark as we approached Offutt Field, Nebraska so we flew on 
to Wichita, Kansas. By this time though my brain was fried from 
recording all the meteors and listening to all the chatter on the 
headphones. Around 12:00 UT I quit for the night and enjoyed seeing the 
lights of Kansas City (where I was born) and a beautiful sunrise.

There was a press conference and a get-together scheduled for 10am but 
most of us were too pooped to stay awake. After a nice long nap I met 
Dave Holman and George Varros down in the Hotel restaurant for a great 
steak dinner. After another few hours of snoozing it was time to head 
back to Edward’s AFB. FISTA was down for repairs so those folks would 
not be able to observe in dark skies during this last leg of our journey.

Meteor rates during the last flight were back to more normal levels. It 
seems that the Leonids and sporadics were producing rates of around 10 
per hour. When we reached Edwards it was still dark so we flew to the 
coast to take advantage of the last bit of darkness. When we arrived at 
Edward’s there was a fantastic scene as the full moon hung just the 
mountains in the west. The light orange moon in the purple sky was quite 
a sight and a special way to end our journey. The next few hours were 
spent dismantling the cameras and all the cables and removing them from 
the plane. After a last meal together at the Cactus Café we all parted 
and headed home with some new friends and many great memories.




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