[meteorite-list] Once in a Leonid moon....

From: Marco Langbroek <marco.langbroek_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:07:01 2004
Message-ID: <005b01c272a3$ffaf27e0$eed786c2_at_latitude>

Tom wrote:

>List, I have been brain storming on the Leonid 2002 problem of a full moon.
Lets all chip in and figure out a way to paint the moon with a
non-reflective coating! Time is of the essence!


How about this Tom: I suggest all dealers and collectors on this list donate
their carbonaceous chondrites, to be ground up and used for an effort to
coat the moon with a few rocket-loads of pulverized carbon... ;-)

All right, let's get serious. Yes, the moon is a nuisance upcoming November
19, BUT, it is not a drama and I am confident to see a good show anyhow
provided that you take care to pick a proper location to observe.

I have observed the Leonids (and other streams) under moonlit conditions on
a few occasions. In 2000 we observed the Leonids with moonlight from
southern Portugal. We got ZHR's of about 300-350 (the US got higher rates
later
that night, see my MNRAS paper) and even with moonlight, this was a highly
enjoyable show nevertheless. (for those interested: at that time I posted a
narrative account of our enjoyable experience at the following URL:
http://home.wanadoo.nl/marco.langbroek/leoY2K.html
Upcoming November, I expect (see my MNRAS
paper) rates almost 10 times as high as we saw in 2000 from Portugal - so
yes, confident that it will be a good show even with the moonlight!
Moreover, the modellists expect the two peaks of November 19 to be rich in
bright meteors.

So; I do not fear the moonlight will spoil this November's show. It is a
minor setback yes, but not something that will ruin the beauty of the event.
I am more afraid of clouds!

Some advice:
1) try to observe from an area with dry air. Moist air increases the scatter
of moonlight considerably. So head for a desert or semi-desert if you can;
2) try to observe from a dark location away from cities. Light pollution is
cumulative, so don't think "there is moon anyway so why bother about
citylight". No; it pays to get to a dark rural location under moonlight
too!;
3) observe in a sky direction away from the moon (get your back to the
moon - so look east in the case of this year's Leonids), and if possible
hide the moon from direct view behind a tree, house or low wall. This really
helps. In 2000, I was on the top of a Portuguese hill, hiding the moon
behind the little church on top of this hill. We actually reached quite nice
limiting magnitudes in the part of the sky - opposite te moon- where we
observed.

Upcoming November, I will be in the semi-desert of southeast Spain watching
one of the two peaks (we will be running a multistation
photographic/videonetwork there for orbital determinations, and we will do
visual counts). If we don't get clouded out and the stream lives up to
expectations (i.e. zenith hourly rates of at least 2500/hr), that will
become my third Leonid storm (I observed the 1999 storm from Spain and one
of the two 2001 storms from Arizona).

best wishes,

- Marco Langbroek ("The Meteor Outburst Hunter")
  Dutch Meteor Society (DMS)
  http://www.dmsweb.org

---
Marco Langbroek                    e-mail: marco.langbroek_at_wanadoo.nl
Diefsteeg 1
NL-2311 TS Leiden
the Netherlands
http://home.wanadoo.nl/marco.langbroek/
"What seest thou else
  In the dark backward and abysm of time?"
William Shakespeare: The Tempest act I scene 2
---

Received on Sun 13 Oct 2002 06:31:34 AM PDT