Comments on: Will the Leonids roar in 2009?

By: Justin

Justin — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:36:26 +0000

Hey Ashley,

I’m living in Seoul as well. The light pollution is going to make things really tricky, but the best place to view them will probably be outside of Seoul. Take a late night bus to Seoul Grand National Park or to any mountain or outlying part of Gyeonggi-do. The best time will be between 4 and 7 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18. The sun is just going to come up and spoil the fun shortly after the burst, so be watchful!

By: Ashley

Ashley — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:01:03 +0000

HI, I am currently living in South Korea (Seoul to be exact) and I am very very curious as to when , date and time, I can see the 2009 Leonid Meteor shower/ burst the best? If anyone can get back to me it would be greatly appreciated

By: PhilB

PhilB — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:28:41 +0000

Phil,

For the Leonids in Boulder, best thing I’ve ever done is rent a hotal room in Estes Park (preferably one with a private, outdoors hot tub, they’re not too expensive), get a nap in, then head out to Rocky Mountain National Park for all the cold viewing pleasure you desire. Loading the car up with blankets really helps with this.

When finished, take whatever frozen parts of the body that will still move back to the hotel and jump in the hot tub to defrost. If you’re lucky like we were, you can view the last of the Leonids from a nice steamy hot tub.

*It should be noted that with some places it might also be possible to view most of the shower from the hot tub as well, eliminating the need to ever actually freeze.

By: Steve C

Steve C — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:32:40 +0000

The 1999 shower was clouded out in Houston, but the 2001 Leonids was the most spectacular one I’ve seen. One of my favorite astronomical events.

By: StevoR

StevoR — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:22:50 +0000

IVAN3MAN Said on December 5th, 2008 at 12:42 pm :

“Here is an interesting/useless (depending on your mindset) fact:

The estimated (*Ceplecha, 1996) amount of meteorite dust in-fall on the Earth is:

1.5 x 1011 gm/year; equivalent to 150,000 tonnes/year.

I’ll go away now.

*Source: Talk-Origins Archive — Meteorite Dust and the Age of the Earth.”

Thanks. I found it interesting. Cheers!

Here’s another :

“The silt in a houses eaves probably contains a minute amount of interplanetary material.”

- Page 70, ‘The Universe and Beyond’, Terence Dickinson, Camden House, 1992.

Oh & more typo corrections (please, BA please can’t youlet us edit or preview these posts??!)

“Little rocks on big monoliths” & Leonides ( or was it Leonidas?) the ancient Spartan warrior king of thermopalae pass battle fame – assen in movies ‘The 300 Spartans’ & more recently ’300′.

By: StevoR

StevoR — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:16:18 +0000

Argh! Typoos! That should read ‘Leonids * over * Uluru.

Leonids *of * Uluru .. duno what those ‘d be!

Blokes named Leonid born or living there I guess?

Or Leonid collection specifically stored in a museum there (little rocks onbig monoliths?)

Or a cult of Leonides (the ancient Spartan warrior king of tehrmoplaye pass battle fame)being based there for some odd reason?

By: StevoR

StevoR — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:10:14 +0000

Great picture of Leonids of Uluru. THX BA. :-)

It sure would be great to have a Leonid meteor storm in 2009 – this being the two hundred and thirtieth anniversary of the first major recorded Leonid storm in 1799!

Who knows we may even capture a Leonid hitting the Lunar surface as happened
a few years ago (?) if I recall right ..?

By: IVAN3MAN

IVAN3MAN — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 08:38:18 +0000

@ vs,

What you probably had observed is what’s known as a satellite flare; the most notable ones are the Iridium communication satellites.

Click on my name for more information.

By: vs

vs — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:54:23 +0000

Nr. Asti, Piedmonte, Italy.Around 0.45 this morning I saw some unusual activity. I am not a star-gazer but the night sky was so clear and I saw a couple of shooting stars, so carried on looking.It seemed that behind the night sky there were intermittent flashes of light, lifting the light level and there appeared to be a star that moved across the sky laterally and the erratically in short bursts. Could it have been associated with this phenomena

By: Ted Judah

Ted Judah — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 16:25:32 +0000

I was a volunteer docent at the Robert Ferguson Observatory in 2001 and I was getting ready for a huge star/meteor party the night of the Leonids. It turned out to be spectacular! My father often told me about the 1966 shower and I always wanted to see one. At it’s height it looked as if the Earth had gone hyperspace like the Millenium Falcon and I was strapped to the nose! It was also at this time that my wife told me she was severly ill and had to go home – NOW! I tried to persuade her to lay/lie down in the car otherwise I would have to inch my car out of the parking lot which was now filled with hooting, dark-adapted, supine humans. My wife insisted, and with much effort, and a small red flashlight, we navigated the lot without pissing-off too many sky-watchers.

As we got down the hill below the observatory which is in a state park. We saw dozens of cars in line that the highway patrol was not letting in because the parks’ day-use (night-use) parking was full.

I was bitter. Here I was leaving a perfect dark-sky site at the peak of a rare Leonid storm like the one my my now-dead-father fondly spoke of.

However, our drive home took us through the dark vineyard-strewn country-side of Sonoma and I could see the streaks coming straight down in front of me, angling to the left on one side and angling to the right on the other side. It was cool. And I annoyed my wife a few times by driving slow with the headlights off.

Good times.

Well, we are still happily married and now she is letting me build an observatory – so I forgive her.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:47:19 +0000

Hi Phil,

Oops, read the third paragraph of that article where they define a meteor storm

Forecasters define a meteor storm as 1000 or more meteors per hour. That would make the 2009 Leonids “a half-storm,” says Jeremie Vaubaillon of Caltech, who successfully predicted a related outburst just a few weeks ago.

By: KC

KC — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 00:50:01 +0000

The Moon is new on Nov 16 2009 so the moon phase will be good for a shower. Let it rain!!

By: Phil Plait

Phil Plait — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 00:46:44 +0000

Daniel, I didn’t know the word “storm” had a hard and fast definition. That strikes me as being a bit silly, but 500 an hour is quite a few meteors in any case. And the very first line of the NASA release says “Astronomers from Caltech and NASA say a strong shower of Leonid meteors is coming in 2009″ which is why I used the plural.

By: Daniel Fischer

Daniel Fischer — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 23:54:43 +0000

The key statement of this posting, “astronomers are predicting a minor storm”, is doubly wrong, unfortunately: a) even the most optimistic model predicts a meteor rate of only half of what’s considered the minimum requirement for a meteor storm, namely a zenithal hourly rate of 1000. If at all we’ll get a “major outburst” in 2009. And b) it’s not “astronomers” who are predicting said major outburst but just one so far, with someone from NASA (who in the past was not exactly successful with his own models) apparently agreeing. Too bad that another well-respected meteor theorist, while also expecting an outburst at the same time, is getting much smaller numbers for the maximum meteor rate in 2009 than the model NASA is publicising now. Before booking a flight to Asia, I would rather wait for the models to converge …

By: llewelly

llewelly — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 23:20:43 +0000

Speaking of dark sky – what the heck is the hold up on those rocketpacks? If we had rocketpacks, dark sky would be a half-hour’s drive straight up.

By: Dave Svoboda

Dave Svoboda — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 22:21:32 +0000

Some of my best times in recent memory have been on my annual pilgrimage to the Anza-Borrego Desert at midnight, to sit in the middle of nowhere on the lawn loungers with all the lights off, drinking beer and watching the Leonid and Perseid meteor showers. (Short of the very cold Palomar Mountain, Anza-Borrego has the darkest skies near San Diego.)

Recently I moved to Boulder, CO. Phil, where’s the best place around here to find dark sky? It looks to be a two-hour drive east onto the plans, is that it? Or are there secret little pockets of dark sky more nearby, like Mount Palomar is to San Diego?

By: NiteSkyGirl

NiteSkyGirl — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:10:54 +0000

just incase anyone is wondering ….

The next metor shower is ..
Major Activity:
Radiant Duration Maximum
Geminids (GEM) December 6-19 Dec. 13/14

By: Old Muley

Old Muley — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:59:45 +0000

I’m really up for a good meteor shower or any other interesting back-yard-observable sky phenomena. The weather never seems to want to cooperate with me and my attempts at observations.

By: Michael L

Michael L — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:10:29 +0000

Phil said:
“That’s tough, even on this amateur naked-eye astronomer.”

Did anyone else read “naked astronomer”?

Sorry, Phil, but I guess your skeptical calendar pose from a few years ago is now burned in my brain…

I’m doomed.

By: Roper B

Roper B — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:52:55 +0000

Had a great experience with my mom doing the same thing Phil. Got up this summer for the good meteor shower (I forget which one) and talked for about 2-3 hours until the sunrise washed out the shower.

Makes me hope to do the same for my kids when I get that age.

By: IVAN3MAN

IVAN3MAN — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:42:45 +0000

Here is an interesting/useless (depending on your mindset) fact:

The estimated (*Ceplecha, 1996) amount of meteorite dust in-fall on the Earth is:

1.5 x 10¹¹ gm/year; equivalent to 150,000 tonnes/year.

I'll go away now.

^*Source: Talk-Origins Archive -- Meteorite Dust and the Age of the Earth.

By: JoeSmithCA

JoeSmithCA — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:11:44 +0000

Well actually Phil you are moving about, it’s called shivering

Thanks for the update. I always miss the leonids for the above reasons and in coastal Southern CA the light polution really drowns out what you get to see and the marine layer pretty much takes care of the rest.

Anyone have any suggestions for time lapse photography? Anything to strip out some of the light polution?

By: RobertMadewell

RobertMadewell — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:01:38 +0000

In case anyone is interested.

Seventh Day Adventists claim that a specific leonid shower was the sign of Jesus’ impending return. This “sign” and many others inspired the so called “Great Disapointment.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Disappointment

The meteor shower that the SDA church cites as a sign of Jesus’ return is described on page 308 of The Great Controversy by Ellen G. White. It occured on Nov. 13, 1833. It was a Leonid shower. Those are often spectacular and it was the right time of year for them. 1833 also falls on a year that the leonids could have produced a meteor storm. She also cites the earthquake in Lisbon in 1755 as fortelling the second advent.

By: Phil Plait

Phil Plait — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:55:18 +0000

FWIW, when we went out in Virginia to watch the Leonids it was about 20 F. When you’re lying down not moving, that’s incredibly cold.

By: Carey

Carey — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:43:33 +0000

Ah, I looked it up – Geminids are in December