[meteorite-list] Leonids in Colorado

From: Ginger Mayfield <chikadee_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:47:12 2004
Message-ID: <3BF839EB.2C3C1FFF_at_earthlink.net>

We had an awesome shower/storm here in Colorado but at first
it looked like we were going to miss it when it clouded up
around 9:30 MST. We were looking at an internet moving
weather page which showed the band of clouds which was over
us and my friend said he thought it might pass on through in
time for the big show. Sure enough it cleared at 0100 and
stayed clear until around 0500. A perfect window for
viewing the best meteor shower I've ever seen. I was at
home with some friends at 9400 ft. elevation in the Rockies.
Pretty dark skies and the temp was 21. We also had good
seeing but no one was much interested in looking through the
scope and I can certainly understand why! Seemed like we
had multiple streaks of fire in all parts of the sky for
several hours. Had some big ones with long smoky trails
which lasted several minutes. Around 0430 local time I was
at the ep of my 14.5 scope looking for the elusive (to me)
comet LINEAR/2000 WM 1 when there was a really big fireball
which lit up the sky and left a huge trail. I put the scope
on this trail at 50x and it was an amazing glowing rope with
all kinds of texture, floating in the sky. Wish I had had
the presence of mind to take a picture of it but it was
already late and the old brain doesn't always think of these
things at the time. It's snowing here now so last night
seems like some magical trip that was over too soon. We
were very lucky this time here in Colorado. Have really
enjoyed reading the other reports from those of you lucky
enough to see the awesome show. I did manage to catch one
meteor image on my digital camera (out of 44 I took). Here
is the link to the image, just for you, Tracy.
http://home.earthlink.net/~chikadee/leonid1118011.jpg

Ginger
Received on Sun 18 Nov 2001 05:44:59 PM PST