BA – Have you been out watching them & had any luck?

This year incidentally marks the 210th anniversary of the very first spectacular Leonid meteor storm which occurred in 1799.

Also meteor showers online has a ggood webpage on them :

http://meteorshowersonline.com/leonids.html

@ 13. Melanie (Australia) Says:

StevoR – The air is a ‘cold’ 30C today! Back to the furnace Wednesday.
- Melanie

Thanks.

Hope its cooler for you too today – here the temperature is “only” 36 or so now and 39 forecast versus 41 forecast for today. (& still for Thurs.) Catastrophic fire level tomorrow as well. Scary esp. after Victoria’s Black Saturday bushfire.

BTW. If you don’t mind me asking, are you on facebook?

It was.

Here in Boulder, I doubt if I’ll get out. Between having a 4yo daughter sleeping in her bed, too much light pollution in my yard, and having nighttime temperatures well below freezing, I seriously doubt if I’ll catch this one. That was a nice thing about being childless in San Diego, years ago. It was really great driving into Anza-Borrego Desert and just lying in lounges in the darkness, in sweater temperatures, watching the sky. One time we fell asleep, only to wake as the sun was coming up, so we drove back into town and went to work.

Edit:Darn it doesn’t rise here until 2.30 am or so. Anyway won’t stop me if I am up.

Melanie
Riverland SA

And don’t gorget the Gemenids (sp) in December. Can’t hurt to plan ahead.

I think its spelt Geminids.

Gemini is the constellation the Bayer (Greek letter) star name form is Geminorum eg. Pollux is Beta Geminorum & the abbriev.* form is Gem eg. Castor = Alpha Gem.

Thanks for reminding me of them too!

PS. See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geminids for more.

Wheep, we’re socked in here in KC too. No sky viewing for the next several days… hell I’d just like to see the sun.

I wish we couldn’t see our Sun right now. Its far too hot and a few thick clouds at the right time – like during the day esp. around noon – would be very welcome. Rain would be even more so.

Adelaide has just had 8 days of heatwave (first ever in November) then yesterday a cool 30 & today 34 is forecast and later this week over 40 degrees celcius far over the 100 Fahrenheit mark.

Mind you this is for the Adelaide hills – out bush in the Riverland region of my state its been 44 degrees according to another South Aussie on another recent thread.

Ah if only our Sun was more like Tau Ceti (G8 V) or Alpha Centauri B (K1 V) or Epsilon Eridani (K2 V) instead …

—-

NB. For those few who don’t already know V = a normal dwarf or main sequence star and the spectral class numbers run from G0 at hottest &most massive to G9 for coolest and leas massive within a spectral class. Our Sun is a G2 V star so all the stars mentioned are quite a bit cooler and less massive and luminous than our Sun. Which would be nicer for us right now! Probably belabouring the obvious here -my apologies if so.

Will you be watching* & what do you think the odds of a decent shower are this year?

—-
* I’ll be getting up for an early morning pre-dawn start to the day in the hope of spotting a few of these shooting stars – also it’ll be much cooler at that time of day – forecast 34 degrees Celscius today and 41 degrees C by Thursday here in Adelaide South Oz. Get up, see Leonids, water garden, walk the dog (my own & also for work), go back to bed & try to sleep during hottest part of the day sounds like the plan.

I had the same thought. Weather isn’t looking good.