Subject (meteorobs) Catching the Leonids An Impromptu Collection of Resources Catching the Leonids An Impromptu Collection of Resources I. PHOTOGRAPHY & VIDEO
"NASA invites you to share your photos or images of Leonid meteors with others. Please upload your photos."
http://www.leonids.hq.nasa.gov/leonids/
http://www.leonids.hq.nasa.gov/leonids/photo.html
http://www.leonids.hq.nasa.gov/leonids/pccamera.html More extensive and technically-detailed information is posted by the International Meteor Organization
Photographic Observer's Page
Video Observation of Meteors II. WHERE AND WHEN A good succinct article, "Jaw-Dropping Leonids," is posted by Science@NASA at
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast08nov_1.htm Spaceweather.com includes a map of the constellations showing that the meteors will be emanating from the constellation Leo seen, in the mid-Northern latitudes, just east of due south.
http://www.spaceweather.com/meteors/leonids/observingtips.html NASA MAC has a nifty Java applet allowing you to calculate time and intensity for your location and sky-light conditions (downtown/suburbs/countryside/mountaintop). For example, the Boston-area will peak between 4-6 am, with 688 meteors per hour seen downtown, 2409 in the suburbs, 3922 in the countryside, and 5184 on a mountain top. For San Francisco, those times are from 1am-4am, with peak meteors per hour at from 386 through 1351, 2200, and 2908.
http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/estimator.html
(NOTE - for those in the Central U.S., the UTC time offset for St. Louis is wrong if you bring up that city. Be aware of this problem, as it had not been corrected at the last check. No other errors were noted, but be careful about the UTC time offsets as there could be other errors). The extensive and accessible site of The Armagh Observatory includes a plot of the various comet trails the earth will be passing by and through, and three maps of the globe showing the location of the night skies, from the meteor's perspective, during the three periods of most intense activity. These will be North America for the first trail encounter, and 8 and 10 hours later in East Asia for the second and third trail encounters. Predicted rates range from 1000-4000 per hour for the North American event, and 8000-15000 per hour for East Asian events.
http://www.arm.ac.uk/leonid/info2001.html A good (and colorful) summary of some of this data (followed by a whole lot more technical material) is at
http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/1998.html There is also a set of tables (PDF) showing numbers of meteors predicted for every 15-minute period for 60 cities (30 US, 30 non-US) to be found at NASA's Space Environments & Effects Program page. This page also links to 5 sites that will be collecting "real-time" data.
http://see.msfc.nasa.gov/see/Leonid_Forecast_2001x.html III. ARE THESE PREDICTIONS ACCURATE? HOW DO THEY KNOW? A major part of the story is the progressive science of predicting the exact time, duration, and intensity of the meteor shower/storm. There is an excellent, easy-to-understand seven page article detailing the major research teams' predictions, and their advancing models, especially from 1998 forward, written by Gary Kronk. Among other things, we learn here that another peak storm is predicted for 2002 (although with a full moon), and two smaller peaks predicted in 2006/2007, then none to speak of until 2066.
http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/leonidprediction.html Another good overall background of this recent history, along with more useful information, is in the North American Meteor Networks November newsletter
http://www.namnmeteors.org/namnnotes0111.html IV. PARTICIPATIVE OBSERVATIONS 1. In the NAMN's newsletter listed above, readers are invited to share their meteor reports with the NAMN Coordinator at [email protected]. NAMN also has one of the most extensive guides on line to understanding and observing meteor events (includes a glossary).
http://www.namnmeteors.org/guide.html 2. NAMN also links to an AOL Hometown page, which provides not only a good, succinct description of the event, but also an invitation to submit reports to [email protected]
http://www.hometown.aol.com/theleonids/index.html 3. The American Meteor Society has good information and links on observing the meteor shower, some sidebar articles on meteor speed and so-called "earth-grazers", an extended set of pages on "fireballs", and extensive information for participating in their Visual Observing Program. This includes data forms and instructions for filling them out
http://www.amsmeteors.org/visual.html V. ANNOTATED LINKS The American Meteor Society also maintains an excellent set of annotated links
http://www.amsmeteors.org/links.html This includes a reference to an e-mail list-serve, located at
http://www.meteorobs.org/ This collection of resources was gathered by Rob McCausland (www.world.std.com/~rghm), Nov. 14-15, 2001. It was assembled primarily for use by PEG Access Television Producers And Managers, and distributed to the list-serves of the Alliance for Community Media (www.alliancecm.org). Posted to meteorobs (my maiden post) for proofing and corrections. The archive and Web site for our list is at http://www.meteorobs.org. If you are interested in complete links on the upcoming LEONIDS, see http://www.meteorobs.org/storms.html.
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