Sunspots and Perseid Meteors this Weekend — OZONE Asylum, home of the Mad Scientists

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Sunspots and Perseid Meteors this Weekend

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Your Text: Insert Slimies » Insert UBB Code » Close Last Tag \| All Tags UBB Help	I'm afraid I was spoiled when back in the late 60's I witnessed what I believe was the Leonid Meteor Shower putting on one of it's all time greatest spectacles. Even more astonishing perhaps... I watched this in Prince Rupert, a town known for its rain. A clear night in Prince Rupert is akin to inheriting granny's necklace of hen's teeth. But there it was and there was I.... looking up at not just hundreds.... but rather.... thousands of these things screaming across the night sky. It was like watching fireworks and to be quite honest it was downright scarey. Sure... I'd seen 'shooting stars' before...maybe even 2 or 3 in a single night..... but this was absolute insanity. I was convinced the earth was about to be obliterated...by I don't know what. I was outside from about 11pm until the sun came up. Awe-struck... astonishing.... amazing. No words I'm afraid...just one major mind blower. This quote from 1833 is pretty much what I saw....[quote]Henry (1833) observed the shower from Princeton, New Jersey close to sunrise and noted that ?When first seen by me they were so numerous that 20 might be counted almost at the same instant descending towards the horizon in vertical circles of every azimuth or point of the compass were visible in any one instant.? While the exact meaning of ?an instant? is not clear, it seems probable that this reflects a meteor rate close to 20 per second. He also notes that a student outside at 9.5 local (13.4 UT) recorded 1500 meteors ?...in the space of a few minutes....? Taken at face value, and assuming a minimum of 2 minutes for the observation, this implies a maximum rate of »750/min or »13/sec in general accord with Henry?s own observation. These observations (probably the best numerically available for the peak of the 1833 display) imply peak ZHRs in the range of 50,000?70,000. This is also consistent with interpretation of the observation reported by Olmsted (1834) from Boston almost an hour later of 38,000 as a lower limit to the peak activity.[/quote]The PDF can be had here. Warning!!! It is very dry reading. http://www.astro.uwo.ca/~pbrown/documents/1999-Leonids-Icarus.pdf And yes I will be outside tonite. =) ___________________________________________________________________________ The goal in Life's Journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting "holy moly what a ride!" Loading...
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