Hi Robert, FANTASTIC! WORTH WATCHING!
-- wilgusb (SPACE.com user name)
Not everyone enjoyed the 2002 Leonid meteor shower (some folks were clouded out) but a lot of people sure got a kick out of the event. Some of the comments that arrived in SPACE.coms inbox today:
Just finished watching the best meteor storm in the past 48 years. The best part is that I viewed this event from my drive way inside the town limits of Weleetka, Oklahoma [about 75 miles SW of Tulsa] with street lights all around using a tree to block the sodium vapor lamp only 50 feet away and was still able to enjoy well over 60 meteors in the half hour I spent outside. I was even able to see a few from inside my home by looking to the East through our picture window in the living room. The moon setting behind our direction of focus posed no problem.
I viewed what I would consider the peak activity between 0425 and 0445. Clear skies and a low of 34 made this a nearly perfect morning for "sky larking", as we call it.
My wife joined me on this her birthday and considered this to be a very romantic event to share together. This is the first meteor shower/storm that she has ever seen and she was very impressed that so many shooting stars were visible, coming in waves with at times 2 to 4 streaking from the radiant at once in different directions. She thought it was pretty impressive that I arranged for Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn to all be visible at the same time, topping off the morning with a fly by of the ISS and closing the day with a partial eclipse of the moon! All just for her 50+ birthday.
In this little town of 1,190 people, our neighbors are accustomed to seeing us outside watching for satellites but we have to notify our police department or they will spotlight us thinking that we are up to no good, which obviously ruins our night vision.
Of all the countless nights over the numerous years that I've frozen my buns off, this show was the absolute best I've ever seen!
|  Bill Gallagher made this animated clip of a Leonid from near Lake Tahoe, California, on Nov. 19, 2002. The bright spot near the top is Jupiter.
A sprinkling of other comments drawn from SPACE.coms Uplink message board: This was well worth getting up for. We missed the show last year due to cloud cover, so this was a nice consolation prize. Lots of bright meteors with faint green trails persisting for several seconds. -- gd16507 (SPACE.com user name)
I looked up and coming from the east was the most spectacular fireball trailing across the night sky with it's long tail following behind it. It was slow enough and big enough that my head was actually following it for several seconds. I have never seen anything so miraculous in my entire life. I called to my husband (literally out of breath and weak-kneed) to come outside. I was so overwhelmed I cried. -- skitstj
Absolutely amazing. An event of a lifetime for me and my brother. -- oneworld 
Bill Hall snapped this Leonid image from Lancaster, Texas, near Dallas on the morning of Nov. 19, 2002. It was taken with a digital camera set for a 30-second exposure. Twilight is just breaking, and Jupiter is in the lower left. Stars are a bit elongated because they move slightly during long exposures. Click to enlarge
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Keep looking up,
Richard W. Abrams
Just read your article on space.com and wanted to give you yet another report on the Leonids last night. I live in upstate NY near Albany where there has been intense cloud cover for over a week and couldn't stand the thought that I would miss the best Leonid show in a century after having seen all the ones in years before. So last night I jumped in my car and headed down to Duxbury, MA to a nice state park there. Very nice observing Conditions and I had a great time despite the cold.
I got out there around 1:00am EST and settled in for a long night. By far the highlight of the evening for me was seeing a huge fireball at just about 2:30am EST. It moved in an East to North East direction almost right in front of Ursa Major. The fireball streaked across the sky and exploded with a "pop" and a flash that lit up have the sky. The best part was the smoke trail that it left behind lingered on for at least two minutes after the fireball exploded. It kept its original shape and all. I was amazed at how long it lasted, with all the Leonid shows that I have seen I have never seen a fire ball this big.
The rest of the night was almost just as exciting. From 2:30am EST on I saw approximately 6-12 meteors per minute. They would come in bursts though. I would see 6-12 for one minute, then a few stragglers over the next few minutes and then another 6-12. The peak started picking up around 5:30am EST but some clouds started rolling in then and most of the faint ones where drowned out as the sun started showing then as well. So I didn't get much of a peak all though a few bursts seem to pick up to around 12-15 per minute.
I personalize was amazed at how many bright fireballs and earthgrazers that I saw though. I had a first time ever meteor shower observer with me and she was completely satisfied with all of the bright fireballs. It was definitely worth no sleep and the 4 hour drive and I would do it again in a heart beat. Even though next year won't be a full "shower" I will still find a nice spot to settle down and catch a good show.
Regards, Mark T. Clemente
My wife and I saw a spectacular Leonids light show early Tuesday morning from a field in western Montgomery County, Maryland, in the Washington suburbs. Almost as soon as we arrived at our viewing point around 4 a.m., we began spotting streaks of light in the virtually cloudless sky.
Our real hope was to see some fireballs, though, and my wife, Stephanie, caught the first one a little while after we started staring up. Although the action subsided for relatively long periods, the wait between meteors was worth it, to say the least. We were rewarded with a number of magnificent fireballs, each with an impressive trail of smoke that was thrilling to take in.
A few of the fireballs were blue, and every now and then a meteor whizzed by that was so bright it looked like several meteors in one! During one short but particularly amazing stretch at about 5:30 a.m., we counted one meteor every few seconds!
Sam Silverstein (Sam is a staff writer at our sister publication, Space News)
While many casual observers were thrilled with this year's display, many scientists (as well as a fair number of backyard skywatchers) were lest enthusiastic. This, from Charles Morris, who maintains the Comet Observation Home Page at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory:
I thought I would put in my 2 cents worth on the shower. We were at 5500 feet in Lockwood Valley, Calif., which is where we observed last year's storm. This year's shower was much less impressive than last year's storm.
1) There was little activity before and after the 30 minute peak this year, which occurred ~2:25-~2:55 a.m. PST. Last year, there was significant activity from midnight to dawn.
2) The rate during the peak was 3-4 times less (my guess) than last year.
3) This year's shower was dominated by faint meteors...which in turn were hampered by the moon. Last year was dominated by bright meteors and fireballs. There were many trains (trails) that lasted for many minutes... very few of these this year.
4) This year most of the meteors were observed near the radiant. Last year many were visible far away from the radiant with very long trails. (How much the moon affected this is unclear.)
Given last year's display, this year's shower was a disappointment. Compared with other meteor displays, it was quite good...however, I have seen a 2 or 3 others that were as good.
Charles S. Morris
| The Perfect Holiday Gift: The Entire Night Sky! |
| Something to do after the Leonids!
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