[AZ-Observing] Re: The Leonids from Vekol Road
- From: "Kevin Bays" <bayskevin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 20:42:34 -0700
I observed the leonids off and on through the evening while on a geology
class field trip. We were camped at the southeast end of the Whetstone
Mountains between Huachuca City and Benson. There were a few patchy clouds,
but no difficulty in seeing any part of the sky. It didn't even seem
terribly cold in my sleeping bag. I don't normally sleep on the ground
without a tent, but this seemed a good opportunity to watch the sky. I
catnapped here and there, and was amazed at all the simultaneous meteors,
the short "-"s that Torsten described near the radiant, the ones that shot
across the sky for a few seconds leaving a nice trail, and the ones I never
saw but for the artificial "lightning" they produced. Another time I
decided that the left over tail had a bent shape too it. Could that be due
to high altitude winds? A really spectacular and memorable event all
around.
I regret missing the one around 5:00 I'm reading about here. It sounds
spectacular.
But I have to say that the best one I witnessed was one that streaked almost
overhead from east to west about 10:30. This may be the one that Jim
Cassidy saw from Vekol, and maybe even the one Bill Ferris saw way up north.
Absolutely unbelievable. It just kept going, and going, for around ten
seconds. It had a dramatic and long tail too. I caught it out of the
corner of my eye when it was a little east of overhead, and it seemed to go
to about 15 degrees of the western horizon before finally fading. Longest
I've ever seen. I sure am glad I started watching before midnight. Even
the non-enthusiasts I was camping with let out a holler over this one. Did
anyone else see this amazing meteor?
Clear skies
Kevin Bays
----- Original Message -----
From: Jim Cassidy <JimCassidy@xxxxxxxx>
To: <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2001 12:37 PM
Subject: [AZ-Observing] The Leonids from Vekol Road
>
>
> My wife and I went out last night, and when we got to the Vekol Road site
> and the sky looked really poor. There were a fairly large number of
people
> there (around 20 cars or so at dusk) and people continued to show up all
> night.
>
> We did a bit of normal observing (looking at the Andromeda Galaxy, the
> Dumbell Nebula, other pretty easy targets, as the sky was continually
> clouding over and clearing). The joke became that, you'd identify a clear
> patch of sky, look down at the chart, start to move the scope and clouds
> would appear.
>
> There was a substantial "party" atmosphere, and we did a fair amount of
> walking around and chatting (and looking through a neighbors new Celestron
> 11" w/ GPS. When the sky was clear this scope produced some really nice
> views that were noticeably brighter than our 8" dobs (as
> expected). (<Homer>Ummmm, Celestron</Homer>).
>
> Around 10:00 though, the sky was so bad that we packed up our telescope
and
> camera and almost left. At about that time, we saw an amazing meteor that
> streaked across the sky high to the south and probably spanned 100 degrees
> of the sky, it changed color and brightened and dimmed the entire way
> across the sky. It really charged up the crowd and produced a number of
> "wows", cheering and clapping.
>
> We decided to stay and napped a bit and started watching the sky again
> around 12:30 AM, and the clouds cleared substantially, and the show was
> just amazing. It really started to pick up after 1:00 AM, and just
> continued to get more intense. This was the first meteor shower of this
> magnitude I've seen, and it really put the lie to commercial fireworks.
At
> times there were two and three simultaneous meteors, sometimes there were
5
> or 6 in a second, and they were happening just about everywhere we
> looked. It was really cool to know that there still exist things that can
> cause people to emit unsolicited shouts of joy. Definitely a night to
> remember, even if it was really cold. I think the two neatest events were
> 1) when two meteors simultaneously seemed to originate from Leo's sickle,
> one heading north and one heading south and 2) when two meteors raced
> across the zenith, one on either side of Jupiter. Just spectacular.
>
> We wrapped it up just after 4:00, and headed home very happy that we
waited
> out the clouds, and that such a super display was provided.
>
> JC
>
>
> Jim Cassidy C8H10N4O2 | Developer >
Code
> JimCassidy@xxxxxxxx
>
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