[meteorite-list] Leonids in Colorado

From: Joy Murakami <murakamij005_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:47:12 2004
Message-ID: <001201c1708a$71db74d0$6701a8c0_at_D1PSP011>

Hi,

(My apologies to the list about my very unrigorous comments about Forest 033
as E7 for E6 in the thread on LL7's! ...and thanks to Bernd for keeping a
short leash on us romantics...)

Here in 'sunny Hawaii' last night was one of the best-seeing high-contrast
nights in a long time...a cloudless dark sky w/ Jupiter 'n Mars and most of
the stars just staring incredibly colorfully and not flickering, the haze in
the Pleides and Orion's sword drawing my eyes a thousand times, looking like
comet Hyakutake did, not a breeze, but a hint of dew on everything... and
off in the horizon the ocean was smooth and glass-like, reflecting the light
of solitary hand-line fishers in their tiny launches and an interisland
cruise liner anchored miles beyond Diamond Head. My chosen viewing spot was
my backyard which faces away from Diamond Heand and to the East NE to the
dark Koolaus, blocked from Honolulu and Waikiki's formidable lite polution
by my home itself.

It was very nice. No, it wasn't a super spectacular shower between 12 and
3, not like the reports from the East Coast...but it certainly was a treat
seeing perhaps 1-2 meteors per minute with moments of seeing 2's and 3's
simultaneously. Most were long orange streaks reaching half the sky from
east to west with an occasional larger one that spanned the entire sky. An
occasional darker one would streak across at seemingly twice the speed
(optical illusion??) Occasionally a hint of green and bright yellow, a
fading dust trail looking like parallel lines, more puffy liinear dust
trails close to the eastern horizon glowing for a moment then dissolving
away..so silent, quiet. Couldn't put my binoculars to my eyes to go
star-hopping for fear of missing another spectacular one or two...

Earlier, I could hear the whoop of one of my neighbors when an especially
large one passed, but I think they must have turned in about 2, as did my
kids and wife when fatigue and cold set in. A humid 65 with dew on the
ground will do that with only a light sweatshirt and jeans on. No star
storm, but the kids were delighted with the sporadic and colorful show.
Didn't see any bright enough for shadows.... but still the best Leonids I've
seen since living here these past twenty years...

Joseph
Honolulu

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ginger Mayfield" <chikadee_at_earthlink.net>
To: "Meteorite List" <meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2001 12:44 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Leonids in Colorado


> 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
>
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Received on Sun 18 Nov 2001 06:40:45 PM PST