[thechat] leonids

[Marlene Bruce]

Hey Rudy,

>so, did anybody see anything?

Lots and lots. The most meteors I saw simultaneously were four, but I 
bet people in an even darker region saw more. I was up in the 
mountains, northeast of Silicon Valley. We had *some* light pollution 
(and just a peek at the beautiful city lights in the distance below), 
and the view was slightly obstructed by the hills and a small stand 
of shrubbery/trees to one side, but I think we did well with the 
location. I never did count the meteor frequency in a given period of 
time, but at the high-point (which was pretty extended) the average 
maybe evened out at about one every 4 seconds. I stayed out from 1:30 
- 4:00 AM (the peak was supposed to happen around 2:00-ish).

Some of the meteors were especially gorgeous, with long, wide, 
colorful tails (greens, blues, oranges) that faded slowly (even many 
of the non-colorful ones had long, slowly fading yellow/white tails).

Some meteors seemed to burn in two bursts. The meteor would enter the 
atmosphere and glow with a large, colorful tail, then start to fade, 
then glow brightly again (perhaps as another type of matter burned 
off?) before fizzling out.

At one point, three meteors simultaneously burned, rather far apart 
but pretty evenly spaced, moving away from an imaginary center-point 
as if racing towards the outer edge of a large circle. If the tails 
were to be extended to meet in the middle (which they didn't), it 
would have made up the center of a Mercedes symbol.

Some of the meteors had rather long tails, but nothing from horizon 
to horizon as you indicated you've seen.

When the larger meteors began burning, there were lots of ooh's and 
ahh's, but after an hour of them we'd become somewhat jaded, they 
were so commonplace!

>i got up at 4:30 a.m. but it was clouded over -- drat and dagnabit!

Bummer, dude! The few clouds here (SF Peninsula) had mostly passed by 12:30 AM.

>and to think it was crystal clear at 11 p.m. -- the kids and i were out with
>binocs looking at jupiter (we think we saw one moon) and the orion nebula

I'm envious. Jupiter *was* nice and bright. I had the Planetarium 
application on my Palm open when I first arrived, to orient myself 
... but it was hardly necessary, as the meteors were burning all over 
the place (increasingly scattered and multi-directional as the night 
wore on).

>ahh, broadband... not really worth $40/month (that's canadian, so 
>it'd be about
>$26 in real money) but once in a while you appreciate being able to download
>29megs in under two hours...

Yeah, well it was $40 US in the DC area. It's $59 here in CA. I think 
you're lucky! I'll check out your link when my DSL is finally 
activated (this week while I'm back on the East Coast, naturally).

The Leonids next year should be good too, though it'll be a full moon 
then. But still, after that we're SOL for the rest of our and our 
kids' lifetimes (the next good show will supposedly come around for 
our grandkids).

Cheers,
Marlene