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From Pawnee Prairie Grasslands, CO Portra
800,f/3.5/13mins./pushed 1 stop
These were processed by the best photographic developers in Ft. Collins,
CO Hardy's Photo
Imaging
http://www.hardysphoto.com/
Dan Lazslo's FoxPark report (WOW)The Last Star Party Poem *****************************************************************************
The childhood trauma of missing the 1966 Leonid
storm left me with a little paranoia, would I ever get to see anything
remotely like it? I fidgeted all weekend,
watching the clear sky Friday night, doubting it could last. I was
pleased to
see 4 Leonids on Saturday AM from the backyard,
not skunked at least. Fog rolled in at 5 AM, a worry.
Saturday was devoted to watching the weather
satellite photos of encroaching clouds from the West. A stripe marched
across Utah and posed a major dilemma:
head to Pawnee and risk a rendezvous with the cloud bank, or head West?
I truly regret not being able to be two places
at once. The carnival at Pawnee sounds incredible. OTOH, I
cast my lot
with Wyoming, and Foxpark.
The drive up started a little after midnight,
and North of Laporte there was a hint that something incredible was underway.
Every few minutes, a meteor would streak long
and low, skimming the northern horizon. Within the hour, it was possible
to
see a meteor out any window of the car within
a few minutes of looking. The urge to peek was especially tough on
the leg
from Laramie to Foxpark, with Orion and Sirius
glistening.
After freezing at Pawnee recently, the prospect
of hypothermia at 9000+ feet added a little suspense. But, the temp
in
Laramie was over 30 degrees, a pretty good
omen. Would there be snowdrifts? Screaming wind?
Well, how about 0 out of three. A chill
was there at about 30 degrees, but the air was absolutely calm. A
little snow in
shady spots. I think I've felt colder
there in August.
A moose greeted us as we passed the campground, another good omen.
Then we finally pulled into the meadow.
What followed was hours of disbelief, interrupted briefly by the annoyance
of
a slipping telescope drive. Not going
to be an easy night for photos. While looking down to set up, the
ground lit up by
a shadow-caster. Typical for me.
But as the morning wore on . . ..
The rain of meteors was impossible to miss.
Look anywhere and see meteors. I felt like every meteor I've ever
seen in my
life was played back within a couple hours.
Swift streaks. Short trails. Bolides. Persistent trains.
Simultaneous pairs,
successive trios . . . With a backdrop
of the Winter Milky Way constellations retreating. Just overwhelming.
A most
impressive aspect of the shower was the number
of meteors near the horizon. Look toward the radiant and imagine
a
celestial flower painted. Look Northwest
or Southwest, and see trains angling down. So cool to look West and
see meteors
retreating, one after another.
The air was transparent until about 4 to 4:30,
and clouds gradually took over from there. My photo efforts were
limited by
a hand-cranked mount. The images are
pale reflection of the event.
Did I see hordes of faint meteors from Foxpark?
No, I saw a lot more bright meteors than I'd dreamed. I think conditions
there favored spotting the low trails, and
the sky made the zodiacal light and band really prominent. My camera
travails kept
me from counting in a useful way, but my 14
and 10 year old consultants came up with numbers that project to about
2000/hour,
counting for a few 5 minute periods between
230 and 4 AM MST.
We are so fortunate to get a look at this.
Thanks to all for your reports, and wish you all had made it to Foxpark.
It was intense.
Dan
,*****************************************************************************
Subject: [FRAC]
Stereo from N Fort Collins
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 23:45:14 -0700
From Jan Kok:
Dave Chamness took photos from his house,
about a mile north of 287 and Shields, and I took photos from a position
about two miles north of there, next to a
lake. Around midnight there were clouds overhead and to the west
in Fort
Collins, but by 1AM or so they had disappeared,
and the sky was clear until 4:30 or so when it got a bit hazy to the
south. At about 5AM there was dew all
over everything, including the camera lens. I cleared it off with
hot air from
my car heater, but then some hunters came
by and wanted to get past my car, so I called it a night. The site
seemed
reasonably dark, but the slides came out noticably
lighter than similar slides taken at Stove Prarie a couple years ago.
I saw maybe 1 meteor per second occasionally,
but I get the impression the people at Pawnee saw a lot more. The
Fort
Collins Nebula was very obvious to the south.
Dave and I photographed stereo pairs from 2:05
to about 4:40. I've got my photos back, and they came out pretty
well.
I've got about 37 meteor trails scattered
over 35 slides, 4 on one slide. The most interesting one was taken
at 3:35-3:40
just west of Leo, a bright one which has a
wisp of "smoke" trailing off to one side from the middle, brightest part
of the
trail. The following slide shows a two-tailed
brown smudge of smoke - ah, I think I understand it now, the meteor came
down through the atmosphere, and probably
encountered winds going different directions at different altitudes.
The smudge
is visible in the slides for 30 minutes.
(But why would the smudge be visible for so long? Does that indicate
a large meteor
that disintegrated into a lot of dust, and
the dust was illuminated by lights from the ground? Surely the dust
couldn't stay
incandescent that long, could it?)
Definitely a satisfying experience! Now to see how the stereo views come out...
Cheers,
- Jan
,*****************************************************************************
Here are some of the first postings at noon
Sunday Nov 18, 2001
From David Dunn
Leonids 2001,
This past year has provided a lifetime of great
observing memories and last night may have made
it the best ever! Starting out the weekend
Fri. night provided another evening of the very good
transparency we have been experiencing lately.
Deep sky objects were nice and contrasty with
the seeing better than the previous weekend
(though still about 5/10). Our hope to catch some
early Leonids were thwarted by a thick fog
bank that moved in right at midnite. Saturday afternoon
it was obvious that the "flats" would play
host to a much larger crowd, by twilight there were more
vehicles than I had ever see in the field
and folks would continue to arrive all night. Early evening
had the atmosphere of a large star party with
folks mingling around the field sharing telescope views
and stories. You could hear the excitement
in peoples voices as they discussed the impending meteor
shower. As the night progressed the clouds
over the front range began to slowly move over us and
covered the sky with a thin layer that you
could still see bright stars thru.
Nearing midnight several of us
decided to cover our scopes in order to appease the Gods and
hopefully clear away the clouds that were
threatening to put a damper on our viewing. Right on cue
we started to see Leonids, one of the first
ones I saw started SE about 30 deg. alt. and actually
skipped 3 times thru the atmosphere as it
traveled about 120 deg. across the sky! The clouds were
surely hiding some meteors from view but there
were still enough bright ones to keep everyone entertained.
By 2:30 a.m. the sky had opened up considerably
and things were starting to really get going. The occasional
fireball would light up the field to the cheers
of all in attendance, usually leaving a "smoke" trail that could
be seen for up to several minutes. By the
time of the predicted peak at 3:00 a.m. we were in a full storm,
some were shouting out counts of up to 50
meteors per MINUTE! Every direction you looked there were
meteors, sometimes 2 or 3 at the same time,
sometimes more. It was without a doubt the most fantastic show
I have ever seen. I had heard predictions
of the peak lasting from 10 to 30 minutes, thankfully they were
not even close. Meteors fell at a high rate
for over an hour, I did not notice any fall off until well after
4:00 a.m. Even then their seemed to be more
fireballs. By this time the Zodiacal Light was brightening the
eastern horizon, funny because this usually
brings nice reactions but it seemed to be an afterthought to
most due to the "other" activity going on
:-). Fighting exhaustion and cold (the wind had come up considerably)
I hit the sack with visions of meteors still
falling, thru my truck's windows. Just a fantastic night that surely
will be talked about at future star parties
for a long, long time to come.
A very tired and humble,
DD
*****************************************************************************
From Jim Sapp..Longmont
Hi Folks:
I'll grogilly (is
that a word?) give a quick rundown of last night's Leonids since no one
else has popped
on yet, for the benefit of those that are
interested (and by the 23 message waiting in this in-box, there
seems to be some interest!). In a word: SPECTACULAR!!!!
That had to be an
all-time record attendance at Cactus Flats too. I heard someone say they
stopped
counting after thirty-some-odd cars had shown
up. There were still cars coming and going up CR65 at 4 a.m.,
much to the consternation of all the dark-adapted
and film-exposing folks there. A calm sunset turned into
a fairly chilly evening (about like Foxpark
in the summer) and there were a lot of good views of planets
and deep sky stuff to be had since there was
a tremendous number of good sized scopes in attendance.
Toward the later hours of the evening patchy
clouds rolled in, then dissipated shortly before another wave
obscurred most of the sky for a while. Around
11:30 or so most folks had covered their scopes and taken
to their lawn chairs to keep an eye on the
intermittent but fairly slow and bright Taurid meteors that were
still putting on their show. Around 12-ish
the advanced scouts from the Leonids began arriving, the first or
second of which gave us a great preview of
what was to come as it's bright green demise came screaming
(figuratively) out the east and skipped three
or four times off the atmosphere leaving a long, punctuated
yellow train. It was followed by several more
bright meteors visible through the murky sky, that increased
in number fairly steadily through the next
two hours as the sky cleared to a wonderful transparency over
most of its dome by 2 a.m.
From roughly 2 a.m. through
the remainder of the night, it would have been utterly impossible to count
the meteors. In any given 10-second period
over the next two and a half hours, there may have been one or
two individual seconds that no meteors were
seen by any single observer, but the remaining eight seconds
each contained as many as six or eight meteors!
It was very common (every minute) to see three or four
good bright ones arrive at once, or in split-second
succession. If on the average we were EACH seeing even
one meteor per second (but actually much more),
that would work out to 3,600 per hour per observer, which
when corrected to ZHR would be a much larger
number. I'm very sure there were periods when the rate
easily exceeded 10,000 and possibly even more.
No part of the sky was favored, as they were visible at
any given moment no matter what direction
you were facing. Incredible! From time to time a bright yellow
Taurid would "swim upstream" or cut across
the path of the much-faster Leonids, which enhanced the show
as well.
All of us readily
agreed that we had never seen anything that came anywhere near the display
they put on!
This was DEFINATELY not one to miss. Possibly
a once in a lifetime kind of thing. I'll remember it the rest
of my life for sure, and would love a repeat
performance! Never seen anything like it. On any given night out
under the sky we usually think it was a pretty
good meteor night if we see three or four bright ones, but last
night it was impossible to miss three or four
good bright ones in a single minute - not to mention the multitudes
of little streakers, and the occaisonal VERY
bright one.
Some of the really
bright ones lit up the ground and were seen reflected off of cars and telecope
tubes.
They were usually a bluish-green and left
blue-green trails that would glow in the sky for several minutes as
the upper atmospheric winds would twist them
into snake-like, writhing forms. One that sticks in my mind came
straight down from the radiant with two blue
explossions followed by a final yellow burst. That was as most of
the remaining die-hards were crawling into
the sack about 4:30 a.m., but several of us whooped for it! The show
was still going strong, but a VERY chilly
north wind was too, and we had all been out under the late autumn sky
for a good ten hours by then. The cold had
taken its toll.
The wind became fairly
ferocious by 7 or 8 a.m. and everyone was pretty quick to get their scopes
torn down
and hit the road.
I'm sure there are
more descriptions of the event that will be hitting the list in the hours
to come, it was
pretty indescibable but something you can't
not talk about!
I sure hope some
of my pictures come out. I hope the 200ASA film I was using at f/2 could
do the trick.
I know it couldn't have caught the majority
of the meteors since they were pretty dim and fast, but I sure hope
I caught a good batch of the bright ones!
At any rate, I'll have some nice winter constellation pics at the least.
I hope you other shutter bugs make out too!
- Jim Sapp
*****************************************************************************
From: Kimon Berlin
Hi all,
I see that the highlights from last night have
already been posted... we had a FANTASTIC time; I can understand
why people would want to travel to see meteor
storms just like eclipses.
This definitely qualified as a storm by my
criterion ("too many to count"). After a while, I was overwhelmed during
one-minute counts (>100 meteors); I did a
few 5-second and one-second counts, and I would guess the peak rate at
10,000-15,000 per hour. Even when you were
looking at the persistent trail from a particularly bright meteor,
you could see dozens of small ones zipping
by. Woohoo!
The peak lasted much longer than estimates;
I left at 5, and I must have seen another 50 through the windshield,
falling in the west!
I think I'll follow Tom T's advice and put my 10,000+ unspent wishes on Ebay.
KB
*****************************************************************************
I thought maybe we were at a summer
star meet with the crowds that showed up at Cactus Flats. Biggest crowd
of people {60 or so I would guess}Cactus flats
has ever seen, for any event in the past 15 years we have been using
the site. The Meteor storm was Super spectacular,
we were counting up to 10 sometimes in one or two seconds, so
3,000 per hour would be low estimate, more
like Jim said, 10,000 is truly realistic. Early one that skipped thru
sky was awesome start for even better fireballs
to come. Some were so bright you could see the flash and have
time to turn around ,and still be seeing it,
with one that took 5 minutes at least for trail on it to disappear into
the dark night sky. We were like the 4th of
July crowds watching the great fireworks show, only way better than
any fireworks show. The best meteor show I
have ever seen, we will be talking about this one for awhile.
We had land owner Ralling Ball
show up with his Wife and Son and his wife and their kids for Awesome showing
of Saturn, Jupiter, Orion and more on my 30
scope earlier in the evening. I was very glad they to came on out
on
this event, because it does not get any better
than last night's special evening, One I will always remember. trying
to get back to normal after this weekend will
take sometime...............
Well still in the upper atmosphere from the
great views of the meteor storm this past weekend. I can not remember
a better night line up.Our prayers for clear
skies worked out well as the sea of clouds parted for our viewing pleasure
Around mid night the clouds started to roll
in so we covered up the scopes to get ready for the meteor storm and the
clouds did part for us before the big event
of the night. The cold front moved in about 6 am when the cold winds from
the north west started to howl. We started
at 6:pm saturday night and by seven we had already done 10 objects, by
midnight we had two summer nights worth of
views in, and still had 4 or 5 hours more of constant meteor barrage to
watch.
We were all looking in different directions
and calling out where and how many. We were hitting at least 8 to 10 per
second at times. I would be yelling out four
,five or six and others would be calling out theirs too.Like kimon Berlin
said
it was futile to even keep trying to count
the numbers .Longest astronomy night of viewing ever for me, almost 11
hours
straight thru the night into the pre dawn
glow. We definitely noticed the Zodiacal light was ban that stretched high
up in
the night sky, pretty strange looking, we
did comment it several times from several different people in the crowds.
We
usually do not make it till those early morning
hours ,so this was kind of a marathon run thru the cold night on the high
plains, very cosmic.
--- gary garzone
*****************************************************************************
WOW!
Even from less-than-perfect skies, the show
was the best meteor shower I've seen in my 35 years of observing (which
began the month AFTER the great Leonid Shower
of 1966!).
Thin clouds abounded when I stopped working
on camera and trip-to-Pawnee plans at about 11pm. Decided to pack
it in and do a re-check around the predicted
max (3am). Over slept (rats!), but did wake up at 4am (whew & yay!)
and popped out for a peak. Was greeted/treated
by a nice assortment of -3 to 1st magnitude meteors in only a few
seconds. After a quick detour back into the
house to roust the other sleeping inhabitants, all went back out for another
look. My backyard conditions were OK (for
a "city site") with all stars in Little Dipper plainly visible (for a limiting
magnitude of around 5.5). Concentrated on
the overhead and northern half ("anti-Denver") portion of the sky. With
approaching dawn (and LOTS of meteors), elected
to NOT do an hourly count. Instead, counted meteors in 10 second
chunks for the next hour. Quickie summary:
ALWAYS had at least one meteor every 10 seconds with a "peak" of
8.
Meteors were coming on average of once every
4-5 seconds for an "official" (non ZHR adjusted) rate of 720-900/hour.
Saw at least three fireballs that cast perceptible
shadow. One VERY nice fireball about 4:40am between the "Sickle"
of Leo and Regulus (i.e., near the radiant).
Several noteworthy items about this fireball:
1. VERY bright (much brighter than Venus at greatest brilliancy, guestimate -6),
2. much slower and shorter than most of the
other Leonids (whoa!, of course, as it was VERY foreshortened since it
was an "incoming" meteor...
DUCK!), and
3. very persistent train. It left a bright
patch ("Scutum Cloud-ish") that slowly faded to Beehive/Double Cluster-ish
and finally faded to M31-ish
after about three minutes.
Rate seemed to fall off by 5:00am and twilight
started to "close the curtain" by 5:30am. *SIGH*, a nice display and
though I've no fotos, all the memories are
perfectly exposed and in focus! Hope you all got a chance to share this
with
friends, too!
Till later...
---> David R Street
*****************************************************************************
From Tom Teters
There were at least 60 people at Pawnee,
about 30 cars, folks joining the fray until about 2:30am.
If you weren't there, your going to
hear a lot about this STORM, we approximated >2,000/hr
and the main shower lasted at least 2 1/2
hours. It was AWESOMEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!
There were at least 5 bolides that exploded
(See APOD
Nov 18, 2001 ) 327K, but worth it!!
David Dunn, Pete Curry & I (at least)
took multiple pictues of the event. I ran out of film!!
...and then let's talk about the 2 hour Zodiacal
light that went to the zenith at it's max.
WHEWWWwwwww!!!
*****************************************************************************
From Ray Wareen: 11/19/01
The film is on its way for processing - stay tuned.
Ray Warren (KC0IUN), Terry Moore (KI0RE), Phil
(AB0JR) and his wife, Don and his son (Terry please fill in
the details) on finding that Pawnee was clouded
over, zipped out to the dark skies 10 miles East of Sterling. The
skies were clear from horizon to horizon until
morning. We split into two teams and exposed one roll of Kodak Max-800.
It was a fantastic show.
Terry ran a video recorder, to capture meteors,
if lucky, but mainly to get the sound. At one point, Terry suggested,
"I'm going to say MARK every time I see a
meteor." Ray agreed to do the same looking West. The result
was hilarious
as well as revealing as to the magnitude of
the storm. There is no doubt that the peak was at least 1 a second
(3,600 an hour).
There was one particularly memorable meteor
that fell out of Leo toward the East (it may be on film). It was
very
bright then exploded at the end. It
left a trail that persisted for several minutes. The trail, over
time, was actually
blown into a loop toward the South.
Another memorable one entered very close to
the radial source in Leo. It was unique in that it appeared to rest
in one
place and just shine. When it went out,
it too left a visible trail (all be it very short) that appeared to have
a bend in it.
Using amateur radio to coordinate the two camera
sites worked very smoothly. There were at least two occasions where
passing cars caused one or the other station
to abort an exposure (so BOTH stations closed the shutters). Continuous
communication allowed the cameras to be easily
re-pointed. When the Zodiacal light threatened from the East, the
cameras
were simply re-pointed to the West.
After everything was packed and we were on
the road heading out (6:00am), A really nice meteor fell right in front
of us.
The trail resembled the boiling effect that
is seen in time laps photos of clouds. It had a green tint
too. One final gift
from a night of WOW.
*****************************************************************************
> In a message dated 11/18/01 1:42:14 PM Mountain
Standard Time,
> gary30views@earthlink.net writes:
>
> > Early one that skipped thru sky
>
> Yes! I saw several that "skipped",
but until you said that I didn't
> realize that is what was happening--just
thought 2 or 3 were very
> perfectly aligned each time (also possible).
From Jan Kok:
Can meteors actually skip, like rocks over a lake?
Arguments against:
1) The effect of earth's gravity only bends
the path of the meteor by tens
of feet in a few seconds. s=.5at^2, a=32ft/s^2.
2) There is not a sharp density gradient in
the atmosphere, as there is
between air and water, which would provide
a fixed direction (up-down) for
forces to act.
3) The "perfectly aligned" objects theory
is plausible: they might have
been connected by some ice which recently
evaporated and allowed then to
drift apart slightly.
4) Perhaps there are regions of higher and
lower density (e.g above high and
low pressure zones) that the meteors go through,
so they glow in some areas
and not in others, as they go along an essentially
straight path.
Argument for:
A space capsule can "skip" (curve its path)
because of its wing-like shape.
And a curveball curves because its spin causes
the speed of the air relative
to the surface to be greater on one side than
the other. (Mumble something
about Bernoulli here.) Imagine a bowling
pin shaped meteor with turbine
cups carved in the body, such that it spins
around its axis (with axis
perpendicular to the direction of motion)
when it hits the air. Because of
different drag on the head than on the base
of the bowling pin (more
precicely, different drag/mass), there is
a force acting to change the axis
so that it would approach and become parallel
with the direction of flight.
But because of precession (gyroscopic effect),
the axis will actually change
in a different direction, so if the object
was going horizontally east-west,
and the axis was initially north-south, the
axis would precess to up-down
and then south-north, and so on. And
because of the curveball effect, the
object would go in a stretched-out corkscrew
path that could dip into the
"glow zone" part of the atmosphere multiple
times.
So which argument is correct? I dunno, but physics sure can be phun! :-)
- Jan
*************************************************************