Leonid Meteor Shower Saturday 17th

Iancar29

• LEONID METEOR SHOWER INFORMATION:
• These meteors are fast (about 40 miles per second) and can leave trails of smoke, according to Astronomy.com. They will appear to radiate from the constellation Leo the Lion.
• One of the 10 cool things to know about the Leonids, from Space.com: "Leonids are spawned by the comet Tempel-Tuttle. Every 33 years, it rounds the Sun and then goes back to the outer solar system. On each passage across Earth's orbit, Tempel-Tuttle lays down another trail of debris..."
• This shower is called the Leonid shower because the meteors seem to come from a point in the constellation Leo. But they are really much closer to Earth than these stars are. The starting point, called the radiant, is found in the part of Leo that looks to be a backwards question mark.
• The Leonids has been called, some years, a "meteor storm" (rather than just a "shower"), but reports say this year will be limited to "at best 10 to 15 meteors per hour." The last Leonid storm, with thousands of shooting stars per hour, was in 2002.

Latest forecast looks good ! ( shockingly enough! )

kwik

Iancar29 wrote: »

• LEONID METEOR SHOWER INFORMATION:
• These meteors are fast (about 40 miles per second) and can leave trails of smoke, according to Astronomy.com. They will appear to radiate from the constellation Leo the Lion.
• One of the 10 cool things to know about the Leonids, from Space.com: "Leonids are spawned by the comet Tempel-Tuttle. Every 33 years, it rounds the Sun and then goes back to the outer solar system. On each passage across Earth's orbit, Tempel-Tuttle lays down another trail of debris..."
• This shower is called the Leonid shower because the meteors seem to come from a point in the constellation Leo. But they are really much closer to Earth than these stars are. The starting point, called the radiant, is found in the part of Leo that looks to be a backwards question mark.
• The Leonids has been called, some years, a "meteor storm" (rather than just a "shower"), but reports say this year will be limited to "at best 10 to 15 meteors per hour." The last Leonid storm, with thousands of shooting stars per hour, was in 2002.

Latest forecast looks good ! ( shockingly enough! )

Is this tonight ian or has it passed already?

John mac

kwik wrote: »

Is this tonight ian or has it passed already?

Leonid Meteor Shower Saturday 17th

its in the thread title.

Tonight should work if clear though.

blatantrereg

Late tonight until dawn is the peak time for viewing it (from binging).

kwik

John mac wrote: »

its in the thread title.

Ooops stupid alert sorry. I will read thing correctly from now on.

Dave!

So, forgive me, but when's the best time to see these on Saturday, and in what direction should I be looking?

blackbird99

they should be appearing in the eastern sky, was just looking at the google sky app,

here is a link to another site with position info http://www.space.com/18509-leonid-meteor-shower-2012-photos.html

jfSDAS

I've some info in a thread on the Astronomy Forum at http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056807307

John

BEASTERLY

Saw a beaut of one at about 23:40 big bright orange fireball left a smoketrail which lingered for a short time.

Iancar29

Dam you Beasterly! haha , i must of missed it somehow!

towards the NE was it yeah?

I seen a few myself over the hour , was nice

Also got this shot of Orion

BEASTERLY

No, directly overhead! Heading to the southwest. Only saw one other though. Fantastic shot btw!

jamo2oo9

Spent over an hour last night looking for meteors. Not one was seen? It was between 2310 and 0040. Was looking towards the eastern sky.