Leonid Meteor Report

After an utter drenching cycling to work at 6am, and light drizzle at 6pm coming home I wasn't hopeful of seeing any clear skies above my head for the 2014 Leonid meteor shower. I more or less forgot about meteors, got on with my oceanography studies, and had a few cups of tea in the warm.

Typical Leonid night for me really. I've never had much luck with this most spectacular - every 33 years or so - of meteor showers. There's always a full moon, or the weather is bad, or the sharp maximum has failed to coincide with UK darkness. The fact that the best viewing for the shower. is found in the early morning hours doesn't help either.

 In fact I've barely ever seen any.

Which is a pity, because this shower is a historic one indeed. Associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle, which orbits the sun every 33 or so years, spectacular meteor storms can occur in years when the comet is at perihelion. In 1833, meteors fell from the sky like rain, and some (possibly exaggerated) estimates put the Leonid count at 100,000 per hour.

A later (1889) depiction of the 1833 storm, in a 7th Day Adventist book.

Similar storms occurred in 1866 and 1966, although famously in 1966 huge numbers of meteors were seen in the USA, while after a huge build up from Patrick Moore, very few were seen in the UK, indicating the short but intense nature of the Leonid maximum.

Hopes were high for the years around the 1999 Tempel-Tuttle perihelion, and indeed around 1000 meteors an hour were seen in these years, although not by me as the weather was rotten every single damn and dratted year. Since then, with the comet now gone, rates have dwindled.

However, as I had the pleasant surprise of going outside at midnight and finding the sky crystal clear, I was still hopeful of seeing a few meteors. As it happened I saw exactly one Leonid, a faint specimen racing through the constellation of Auriga. A non-Leonid sporadic, rather brighter too, appeared through Ursa Major.

So my 30 minute or so watch went mostly unrewarded in meteor terms, but it was hardly wasted. The sky was beautifully clear, and I could even see one of the Auriga open clusters with my naked eye, which I've never done before. Perseus' sword handle was also plain, and the milky way ghosted across the zenith in Cassiopeia.

So you see, time under a clear sky is always valuable. Even if you can't find find what you might have been looking for, there's always something to see.

On the lookout for Leonids

I can't recall ever seeing a Leonid meteor you know. November 18th for as long as I can remember seems to have been an endless succession of clouded out nights or enforced early bedtimes.

Last night was one of the lattter events, but as midnight approached I went outside into the reasonably dark but heavily tree ridden postage stamp of a front garden, and looked to the East where a waning halfish moon was rising between the houses on the next street and Jupiter shone between the branches of the shedding Sycamore.

I got quite nicely dark adapted, took in a few of the sights, looking as always at the Square of Pegasus before letting my eyes wander along Andromeda's lengthy curvy body before arriving at rampant Perseus, bearing the deadly head of Medusa. I took all these sights in, always keeping an eye of the east and the rising radiant, but of meteors, Leonid meteors, I saw none.

Will try again tonight but worry about the clouds, I so do.