A meteor counting software program for Palm Operating System handheld computers has been made available free to the public just in time to count shooting stars during the 2002 Leonid meteor shower.

NASA researchers developed the software so the space agency’s own scientists could make more accurate tallies of meteors during the 2001 version of the annual Leonid storm.

"We wanted something more sophisticated than putting marks on a piece of paper," said Rob Suggs at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) . Suggs and colleague Bill Cooke conceived the program. The programming was done by Marshall's Steve Smith.

Suggs said tests last year went well. "The software worked famously."

The device knows the time. Users input location and an estimate of a thing called limiting magnitude, which involves how bright or dim the stars (and meteors) are that can be seen by the observer at the given time and location.

The software then automatically sorts the subsequent tallies into 15-minute bins and calculates a series of hourly rates for these 15-minute periods, as is the custom among serious meteor observers. The program goes further, however, and figures out what would have been observed if sky conditions had been perfect.

With a bright Moon promising to drown out many meteors this year, the program will generate a tally for how many meteors actually streaked through the sky over an observer’s head, including those that could not be seen due to moonlight and other light pollution.

Suggs said the software is simple to download, install and operate for Palm users who are familiar with such procedures. Instructions are included with the download.