Visual Impression - Naked eye :
 

Nov 99 17/18* ( STORM)
Nothing beats the visual impression of the Leonids showers. Around 2.00 Am or UT 00hr I observed an noticeable increase of meteor activity.
The sky 'open up'  around from 3:38 (UT 0138) onwards- with meteors appearing everywhere.  At peak (~0203 hr)  3-4 meteors per second are common sight. There are so many meteors raining down the sky that I give up counting them with my talking clock and recorder. Instead I just enjoyed the celestial downpours which last approximately 15 minutes straddling the predicted hours OF UT0206. Brief pockets of 'inactivity' were experienced as if signalling a localised density change of the meteor debris as the earth brushing pass them. By about half past four local time, the meteor arrival rate drop as if someone turn down the 'celestral' tap and reduce the flow to a trickle. By dawn activities still going on and we were treated to red 'tear-drop' shaped meteors low in the horizon.
 
• Color - start with green and progress to yellow ( photographic film record the terminal red color not visible to naked eye). The only exceptions are pre dawn Leonids which appear totally reddish in color (preferential  low elevation atmosphere scattering of longer red wavelength).
• Speed - fast ?
• Brightness - more faint meteors around 3+/4+, very few fireballs are seen
• Wake, train - bright meteors leaves wake lasting fractions of a second. Seen one bright meteor leaving a 5 + minutes trained as depicted in my 50 mm f/1.8 exposure below.
• Type of meteor trajectories observed
• saw one small yellow fuzzy 'arc' seen in Leo's Sickle ( from nearly 'head-ons' meteor)
• saw two 30-35 degree length Leonids  that 'disappear' in mid flight and reappearing.
• saw some simultaneous 'bursts'  of parallel pairs of meteors from either 'side' of radiant point ( like a firework display)
• caught one or two very faint and thin - colorless uniform streak
• Near 'head on' by-pass of one long trail Leonid and another long trail sporadic
• Two sporadic at different location / time that had long 'curved' trail and comet like heads.

 
• Regions of the sky observed
• Ursa Major / Pole region - Visual
• At radiant - Leo's Sickle - Visual / Camera
• Procyon - Canis Major- Video system

 
• Impression of the Leonids by emulsion /film

 

 

With only one 50mm and one 15 mm working,  I decided to place the only 50 mm camera framing the whole Constellation of Leo later to Ursa Major- the big dipper  and leaving the wide angle ( 180 degree) fixed covering East - South direction. ( one AE-1 and one AV-1 failed to fire probably due to current drain aggravated by at cold, to add to the confusion I misplaced the remote control needed to fire the EOS 100, the video system is not spare, unknown Hi-8 fault prevent me from videotaping - and this happened at the height of the storm). I was forced  to resorted to visual observation - a move that I never regret.

• Picture #1 - Constellation of Leo  showing five Leonids - 50 mm f/1.8 ASA800. Note the characteristic green-yellow-red trails. Another pic
• Picture #2 -  Constellation of Leo showing 'Cascade' of faint Leonids streaming down the 'Sickle' with a faint satellite trail. 50 mm f/1.8 ASA800.
• Picture #3 -  180d fisheye  view 15 mm f/2.8 ASA400 showing a polar crossing meteor
• Picture #4 -  180d fisheye view of small 'tadpole like' tiny leonids near horizon. ( the wavy star trails is caused by me accidentally kicked the tripod in the dark!)
• Picture# 5 -  A five-minute  meteor 'train' left by a bright Leonids  etc.
• Picture #6 -  Close-up scan of two parallel- Leonids showing the 'spermazoa-like' head and nodule-like body (evidence of multiple explosions)
• Picture #7 -  Radiant point  determined from pic#1,#2 ( for the fun rather than the science)

 

• Impression from my Low lux CCD ( non cooled, non intensified) camera:

• My video 'fire-ball' video patrol set up . I switched to wide angle instead of narrow angle set up to capture more meteors.
• Due to 'technical problem' the camera was only operative for a narrow window of 1/2 hour ( UT:00:06~ UT00:30) at the beginning of the showers.

 
• Camera spec : 1/2" b/w watec-902H fitted with a 3.5mm F0.8 lens hook up to a Sony TRV99E Hi-8 XG camcorder. Audio WWV signal reception was poor(the best frequency being 5.0 MHz) and was dropped. Instead I use Hi-8's internal clock.

 
• Video Limiting Magnitude:( by checking dimmest star on SkyMap): Mag 3.3+(verified again 12/04) (Visual LM of 5.5-6.0+)

 
• Field of Width : 89 degree. (With Orion, Taurus,Gemini, Canis Major visible)
• A sketch of the meteors recorded with respect to background stars. Skymap pro showing the region.
• Example of a >10 degrees bright mag -4 Leonids fireball registered around UT 00:11 Gif animation[1.2Mbyte]
• Example of a composite plots showing all meteors 
• Total # of Leonids registered in 1/2 hr: 38 (was 25) ( compare with visual sighting of 38 in similar time by JAS's member)

 
• Impressions from others

 
• The bright meteor that left a 5 minute- train was picked up by JAS's Radio Scatter set up which produce a continuous reception from  Turkey's FM Broadcasting.
• JAS - Iyad's photograph 28mm 10 min shot capturing >70+ meteors in one single exposure. Daniel Fischer's image enhancement of this great pic.
• Our Syria folk showed me a hand counter stopped at 3162 ( duration unknown)of all the meteors he had seen.
• Reviewed peak-hours tape from Dr Georg Dittie's Canon XL-1 with image intensifier.
• Robert MacNaught's ZHR rate estimate of 7000+/-1000.
• JAS raw count of >5000 meteors total ( duration?) and max of 102 meteors per minutes ( vs Rob's max of 72 per minute).