[thechat] world info on Leonid shower and observing hints

[Chris Spruck]

http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/estimator.html has a form with some prelisted 
cities from around the world or you can enter your latitude and longitude 
for determining the peak time for your location. Remember to put a red 
filter of some kind (paper, plastic, etc.) over a flashlight or you'll ruin 
your night vision, which takes 30-45 minutes to restore to your maximum 
adaptation.

I'd be interested in hearing peoples' experiences with this shower, 
especially if my view isn't good. As a kid, I spent countless nights, 
staying out all night for all sorts of obscure, minor showers. I've seen 
meteors in every color of the rainbow, seen a few break into several pieces 
and keep going briefly, seen a couple last from horizon to horizon, saw one 
skip like a stone on water, and even heard one once. Pretty amazing for 
simple dust.

While you're watching for meteors, you stand a fair chance of catching 
satellites - if you see something pretty dim, moving pretty slowly in 
predominantly north-south or east-west paths, it's probably a satellite. 
Sometimes you'll see them gradually get brighter and dimmer, which means 
they're rotating and reflecting sunlight off different parts. The best 
chance to see them is shortly after sunset or shortly before sunrise - 
they'll be brighter due to sunlight refracting through the atmosphere, even 
though the sun would still be below your horizon.

There's lots of cool stuff you can see with binoculars, so I highly 
recommend taking them out if you have some, although you'll almost never 
catch a meteor using them. One more tip and I'm done - if you're trying to 
look at something dim like a nebula or galactic cluster, don't look 
straight at it, but use your peripheral vision. The rods and cones in your 
retina handle light differently - the cones, more concentrated in the 
center of your eye, are more color sensitive in brighter light and the 
rods, found more in the periphery of the retina, are better for colorless 
vision in dimmer light (which is why everything looks mostly black and 
white if you're walking around in just moonlight). Thus, you see 
astronomical objects better out of the corner of your eye.

Hope this is useful or was interesting!

Chris