[Return to Larry's Home Page]
Leonid Meteor Shower Nov. 18, 2001
Anticipation
Meteors,
or shooting stars, are small particles of debris that are left by comets as
they orbit the sun. When the Earth crosses the debris left by the comet the
particles of dust fall to the Earth and burn up in the Earth's atmosphere and
are seen as meteors. Astronomers can predict when a meteor shower will occur.
The two best meteor showers of the year are the Persied meteor shower which
occurs about the second week of August and the Geminid meteor shower which occurs
about the second week of December. Astronomers rate meteor showers by the number
of meteors one can see in an hour. On any given night you are likely to see
about 5 meteors. During the Geminid meteor shower you can often seen 60 meteors
and hour. Normally the Lenoid meteor shower is very weak showing only 5 to 15
meteors an hour, but every 33 years the Leonid put on a great show. In 1966
the Lenoid had a rate of up to 40 meteors per second. In 1999 the Leonids were
predicted to be very strong. At that time I took two days off from work to see
the show. I had planned to head north out to the desert, clouds closed in. After
repeatedly checking the weather report I decided that heading east would be
the best bet. I drove out to Joshua tree (about a 4 hour drive). The skies were
mostly clear, with clouds moving in from the west. That night I saw the best
meteor shower I had ever seen. Most of the meteors were extremely bright with
long persistent tails. This year another large shower was predicted. Richard
Mathews and I planned to take your families out to Joshua Tree. Richard, his
wife Dawn and son Ray headed out to Joshua Tree on Friday to get a good campsite.
When they got there they found all of the campsites were filled and the ended
up staying in a hotel. On Friday the sky began to cloud up and by Saturday it
was worse. Sally and I checked the weather reports for Joshua Tree, and Vasquez
Rocks and Red Rocks. Over the course of a few hours the reports would check
for each, some getting better some getting worse. By about 2 p.m. all of the
sites that we typically go to were reporting partly cloudy skies. Since Joshua
Tree is a very long drive we decided to head out to Vasquez Rocks which is almost
as dark but only about 40 minutes away. Tom arrived at my house at about 9 p.m
and we drove out to Vasquez under cloudy skies.
Vasquez Rocks
Once
we got past the foothills that mark the northern boundary of the San Fernando
Valley the sky cleared up significantly and it looked like we might have a good
night. The next hurdle would be getting into Vasquez. Vasquez closes at sundown.
Usually we park outside of the park and then carry all of our stuff into the
park. The weather forecast predicted a low of 34 degrees which meant that we
needed to carry in a bunch of warm clothes, hot drinks and sleeping bags to
say warm throughout the night. When we arrived we were very happy to discover
that the gate to the park was opened. We drove in and about 50 yard in we saw
a sign pointing a telescope observing area. We drove down to the end parking
lot and then we only had to carry our stuff a short distance to were the all
of the people with the telescopes were set up. There were about 8 people with
telescopes (all schmidt's). The sky to the west and south was cloudy but overall
it wasn't too bad. Shortly after we arrived I saw my first meteor. We set up
our stuff and then spent about a half hour walking around looking through people's
telescopes. It was really a bit too cloudy for the telescopes so I was happy
that I hadn't brought mine. While talking to one of the people with the telescope
we found out that the park was opened to 12 midnight but then they were supposed
to pack up. This was bad news since the meteor shower was supposed to peak at
about 2 am.
At 11:40 we saw our first good meteor and really the best one of the night.
It was very, very bright with a tail that spanned half the sky and last about
30 seconds. Soon, the people from the telescope club started packing up. We
decided that we would wait until we were kicked out. I took a walk around and
only a few telescopes were left at midnight. I talked with one guy who told
me that the park ranger had come around and told everyone that they could stay
the whole night if they wanted. Hooray, we could now settle down and enjoy the
night!
2000 Meteors
After
midnight we started seeing meteors more frequently. At 1am the pace picked up
quite a bit and by 1:30 I seeing a meteor every 15 seconds. Some were short
and a bit faint, but the majority of them were quite bright. As the show picked
up we could hear oh's and ah's from the people around us. This would be frustrating
at times since occasionally we would hear a bunch of people get really exited
about a great one that we would miss, but since there were so many to see it
was impossible to be disappointed. By 2 a.m. the longest time between seeing
a meteor was about 5 seconds. I would often see pairs of meteors streaking through
the sky. A number of times I could see four in the sky at the same time. My
most conservative estimate is that I saw 2000 meteors that night. This was the
most that I had ever seen, although I think that the last Leonid shower that
I saw had meteors that were brighter with longer lasting tails, but perhaps
that was because I was in a darker place. By 3 am the shower had slowed down
a little, but I was still seeing a meteor every 15 seconds. By this time we
the sky in the north east was a bit clearer so we had moved our chairs around
to face in that direction. Facing that way we could see a huge
outcrop of rock that has been made famous in a number of movies. We noticed
that there were some people with flashlights climbing on the rocks. Climbing
on the rocks in the daytime can be dangerous and it is just plain stupid at
night. I mentioned that the people climbing the rocks would soon be nominees
for the Darwin Awards. Tom said that it was the type of thing that would make
a park ranger tell everyone to get out of the park. Tom was correct. Shortly
after the park ranger told everyone to pack up an leave. It was about 3:30 by
the time we left. There were still a large number of people in the park. We
noticed that quite a few of them had parked outside of the park, so we think
that the park had been closed to cars sometime after we arrived. This made me
feel good about wanting to leave early to get to the park. As we drove home
we could still see dozens of meteors streaking through the skies.
Meteors,
or shooting stars, are small particles of debris that are left by comets as
they orbit the sun. When the Earth crosses the debris left by the comet the
particles of dust fall to the Earth and burn up in the Earth's atmosphere and
are seen as meteors. Astronomers can predict when a meteor shower will occur.
The two best meteor showers of the year are the Persied meteor shower which
occurs about the second week of August and the Geminid meteor shower which occurs
about the second week of December. Astronomers rate meteor showers by the number
of meteors one can see in an hour. On any given night you are likely to see
about 5 meteors. During the Geminid meteor shower you can often seen 60 meteors
and hour. Normally the Lenoid meteor shower is very weak showing only 5 to 15
meteors an hour, but every 33 years the Leonid put on a great show. In 1966
the Lenoid had a rate of up to 40 meteors per second. In 1999 the Leonids were
predicted to be very strong. At that time I took two days off from work to see
the show. I had planned to head north out to the desert, clouds closed in. After
repeatedly checking the weather report I decided that heading east would be
the best bet. I drove out to Joshua tree (about a 4 hour drive). The skies were
mostly clear, with clouds moving in from the west. That night I saw the best
meteor shower I had ever seen. Most of the meteors were extremely bright with
long persistent tails. This year another large shower was predicted. Richard
Mathews and I planned to take your families out to Joshua Tree. Richard, his
wife Dawn and son Ray headed out to Joshua Tree on Friday to get a good campsite.
When they got there they found all of the campsites were filled and the ended
up staying in a hotel. On Friday the sky began to cloud up and by Saturday it
was worse. Sally and I checked the weather reports for Joshua Tree, and Vasquez
Rocks and Red Rocks. Over the course of a few hours the reports would check
for each, some getting better some getting worse. By about 2 p.m. all of the
sites that we typically go to were reporting partly cloudy skies. Since Joshua
Tree is a very long drive we decided to head out to Vasquez Rocks which is almost
as dark but only about 40 minutes away. Tom arrived at my house at about 9 p.m
and we drove out to Vasquez under cloudy skies.
