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The Leonids
Nov. 19th, 2002 01:18 pmI'm feeling very bleary, but I'm afraid my memory will start fading if I wait to be awake. Please forgive awkwardness.
Beth had sent me email a few weeks ago saying that her usual meteor-watching companion was going to be in Texas, and would Eric and I like to drive out into the country with her to watch the show. We said we would, though Eric included a caveat about bailing out if schoolwork became too much, which unfortunately it did.
Beth was going to pick me up at 2 a.m. We had decided to go to the Minnesota Astronomical Society's public event in Baylor Regional Park. That the park would be open to the public and we wouldn't be stumbling around in the dark trying to avoid freaking out police and property owners was a plus; so was the presence of trained astronomers and telescopes, although in the event we didn't make much use of either one except in the eavesdropping department.
I went outside about ten minutes early. It was remarkably clear, given the earlier weather forecasts, and I got a good look at Orion, which seemed both precise and distant.
We had much better weather than anticipated. On the drive itself we were a little worried. There were clouds in the west, lit very brightly by the blazing moon. I'm sure the moon is generally about as bright as it was then, but it seemed much more so. One had no difficulty remembering that what that was was *sunlight*. To the dark-adapted eyes of people in what was for much of the journey the only car on the road, it left afterimages printed on the sky if looked at directly.
We saw three meteors on the way, two through the windshield and the third through the passenger window. The last was a long dim streak; the other two were just flashes. Oh, wait, I think Beth saw one that I missed that was a bit more spectacular.
It was dark in the park, except for the flood of moonlight. Everything looked two-dimensional. The end of the little observatory looked like a cartoon standing stone, cut out of paper. One crack of light showed around its roof. We
parked fairly far down the dirt road that led to it; at the time we did so because we thought there would be no room closer in, but Beth realized later, as people were departing, that it had been polite to shut down the headlights where we did.
In the moonlight dark humped shapes like more standing stones turned out, when approached, to be three telescopes with people standing around them and perhaps three dozen people in lawn chaises and chairs and on the ground, all well bundled in sleeping bags and other apparel. The generally-recognized signal that someone had seen a meteor seemed to be, "Ooo!" We heard several as we picked our way over the lumpy frost-bright grass.
A couple of people in lawn chairs whose later conversation revealed that they had been there since sunset greeted us cordially and said that they were facing southeast, which they believed to be best. A brief flash showed in the sky
in the direction they indicated, so we settled facing the same general way that they were. Some people were facing south and some due east. I had forgotten to do my homework and find out where Leo was. Eric would have known. I found that I was scanning the sky between Orion, which was still very clear and precise at that point, and the Big Dipper, which was hazed over but present, standing on its handle. Beth asked me what a number of bright stars were, but aside from venturing (correctly, as later study showed) that one was probably Saturn, another Jupiter, and a third Antares, I wasn't of much use.
I was very sorry that Eric was missing the experience.
I knew as soon as we got the tarp spread and settled lying on our backs, Beth in her sleeping bag and me in my old blanket, that I had not brought enough coverings nor worn enough clothes. (Three layers top and bottom, very like a stuffed sausage, thanks to Beth's recommendation based on her experience last year; but not enough.) The wind was small, searching, and persistent. I decided not to worry about it.
We missed two meteors while settling, and then there were none for a little while. "They're picking up," remarked a disembodied voice from the telescopes. People would go up to the telescopes from time to time, and the same voice
would provide information -- but not so loudly as either to disturb us or to allow us to hear what it said reliably. I thought of going up to a telescope myself, but getting out of the blanket seemed like a lot of trouble.
The clouds were teasing us. I apologize for the pathetic fallacy, but truly it seemed that way. We lay and stared a the dark clear bottom of the bowl of the sky. The moonlight washed it faintly blue, and I found that I could not do the trick I have managed in the back yard sometimes, of looking between any two stars and seeing another, and repeating until vision rebels. The moonlight put a period to that. It was exceedingly beautiful, but I understood why astronomers speak so bitterly of the full Moon when they want to be seeing anything much else.
In any case, the clouds moved ghostlike from west to east. They never covered or even much dimmed the moon. They fell over Orion and diminished it; they swirled like milk poured into a black glass bowl around all the horizon and sent eddies across the zenith, advanced and retreated and advanced and retreated.
But through them the meteors sped. Most of them were streaks of blue or white, long or short. We saw the most fireball-like one in the first fifteen minutes, a vivid orange line like one drawn by a gel pen with a redder round blot at the end. Maybe half an hour later a chalky blue track with a big round misty blue circle attached went down in a comparatively leisurely fashion. Mostly they were so fast. Blink and you missed one. Look at the part of the sky where the last one had been and you missed one. It was not possible to look at once at all the places you had seen one. I made a number of evolutionary complaints that boiled down to "Unfair to primates!" This made Beth laugh, but did not improve physics or biology in the least.
The meteors came every one or two or five or ten minutes. Often there would be a small burst, two streaks to the left, another to the right, or three streaks straight down to the horizon. From time to time somebody would yell "Oh, wow!" and you would realize you'd missed a good one; or you would cry, "Look at THAT!" and others would murmur or groan.
At 4:30, the approximate peak, the meteors did not happen notably closer together, but there were more of the bursts of two or three or four, and more with long reddish or purple trails, and more straight across the bottom of the sky, from which the clouds had retreated entirely. We realized in time that the radiant would be continuing to move, as the Dipper and Orion evidently and, to our unaccustomed minds, thrillingly, were doing.
At around five, when we were very cold and there was a constant small stream of people packing up their telescopes and their chairs and leaving, the bursts grew closer together and there were far more individual meteors. It was still in comparatively slow motion. If you had known in advance where the next one would be, you could have seen them all. There was one more broad bright orangish one, like an apocalyptic drawing of a comet seen from afar. Several different people were keeping track of either how many they had seen all together or how many they had seen in a given time period. "That's seven," they'd say, or "Forty-nine!"
We left at about 5:15, benumbed and delighted. Driving straight into the east for home, we saw four or five more bright orange falling stars, diving straight for the horizon.
P.
Beth had sent me email a few weeks ago saying that her usual meteor-watching companion was going to be in Texas, and would Eric and I like to drive out into the country with her to watch the show. We said we would, though Eric included a caveat about bailing out if schoolwork became too much, which unfortunately it did.
Beth was going to pick me up at 2 a.m. We had decided to go to the Minnesota Astronomical Society's public event in Baylor Regional Park. That the park would be open to the public and we wouldn't be stumbling around in the dark trying to avoid freaking out police and property owners was a plus; so was the presence of trained astronomers and telescopes, although in the event we didn't make much use of either one except in the eavesdropping department.
I went outside about ten minutes early. It was remarkably clear, given the earlier weather forecasts, and I got a good look at Orion, which seemed both precise and distant.
We had much better weather than anticipated. On the drive itself we were a little worried. There were clouds in the west, lit very brightly by the blazing moon. I'm sure the moon is generally about as bright as it was then, but it seemed much more so. One had no difficulty remembering that what that was was *sunlight*. To the dark-adapted eyes of people in what was for much of the journey the only car on the road, it left afterimages printed on the sky if looked at directly.
We saw three meteors on the way, two through the windshield and the third through the passenger window. The last was a long dim streak; the other two were just flashes. Oh, wait, I think Beth saw one that I missed that was a bit more spectacular.
It was dark in the park, except for the flood of moonlight. Everything looked two-dimensional. The end of the little observatory looked like a cartoon standing stone, cut out of paper. One crack of light showed around its roof. We
parked fairly far down the dirt road that led to it; at the time we did so because we thought there would be no room closer in, but Beth realized later, as people were departing, that it had been polite to shut down the headlights where we did.
In the moonlight dark humped shapes like more standing stones turned out, when approached, to be three telescopes with people standing around them and perhaps three dozen people in lawn chaises and chairs and on the ground, all well bundled in sleeping bags and other apparel. The generally-recognized signal that someone had seen a meteor seemed to be, "Ooo!" We heard several as we picked our way over the lumpy frost-bright grass.
A couple of people in lawn chairs whose later conversation revealed that they had been there since sunset greeted us cordially and said that they were facing southeast, which they believed to be best. A brief flash showed in the sky
in the direction they indicated, so we settled facing the same general way that they were. Some people were facing south and some due east. I had forgotten to do my homework and find out where Leo was. Eric would have known. I found that I was scanning the sky between Orion, which was still very clear and precise at that point, and the Big Dipper, which was hazed over but present, standing on its handle. Beth asked me what a number of bright stars were, but aside from venturing (correctly, as later study showed) that one was probably Saturn, another Jupiter, and a third Antares, I wasn't of much use.
I was very sorry that Eric was missing the experience.
I knew as soon as we got the tarp spread and settled lying on our backs, Beth in her sleeping bag and me in my old blanket, that I had not brought enough coverings nor worn enough clothes. (Three layers top and bottom, very like a stuffed sausage, thanks to Beth's recommendation based on her experience last year; but not enough.) The wind was small, searching, and persistent. I decided not to worry about it.
We missed two meteors while settling, and then there were none for a little while. "They're picking up," remarked a disembodied voice from the telescopes. People would go up to the telescopes from time to time, and the same voice
would provide information -- but not so loudly as either to disturb us or to allow us to hear what it said reliably. I thought of going up to a telescope myself, but getting out of the blanket seemed like a lot of trouble.
The clouds were teasing us. I apologize for the pathetic fallacy, but truly it seemed that way. We lay and stared a the dark clear bottom of the bowl of the sky. The moonlight washed it faintly blue, and I found that I could not do the trick I have managed in the back yard sometimes, of looking between any two stars and seeing another, and repeating until vision rebels. The moonlight put a period to that. It was exceedingly beautiful, but I understood why astronomers speak so bitterly of the full Moon when they want to be seeing anything much else.
In any case, the clouds moved ghostlike from west to east. They never covered or even much dimmed the moon. They fell over Orion and diminished it; they swirled like milk poured into a black glass bowl around all the horizon and sent eddies across the zenith, advanced and retreated and advanced and retreated.
But through them the meteors sped. Most of them were streaks of blue or white, long or short. We saw the most fireball-like one in the first fifteen minutes, a vivid orange line like one drawn by a gel pen with a redder round blot at the end. Maybe half an hour later a chalky blue track with a big round misty blue circle attached went down in a comparatively leisurely fashion. Mostly they were so fast. Blink and you missed one. Look at the part of the sky where the last one had been and you missed one. It was not possible to look at once at all the places you had seen one. I made a number of evolutionary complaints that boiled down to "Unfair to primates!" This made Beth laugh, but did not improve physics or biology in the least.
The meteors came every one or two or five or ten minutes. Often there would be a small burst, two streaks to the left, another to the right, or three streaks straight down to the horizon. From time to time somebody would yell "Oh, wow!" and you would realize you'd missed a good one; or you would cry, "Look at THAT!" and others would murmur or groan.
At 4:30, the approximate peak, the meteors did not happen notably closer together, but there were more of the bursts of two or three or four, and more with long reddish or purple trails, and more straight across the bottom of the sky, from which the clouds had retreated entirely. We realized in time that the radiant would be continuing to move, as the Dipper and Orion evidently and, to our unaccustomed minds, thrillingly, were doing.
At around five, when we were very cold and there was a constant small stream of people packing up their telescopes and their chairs and leaving, the bursts grew closer together and there were far more individual meteors. It was still in comparatively slow motion. If you had known in advance where the next one would be, you could have seen them all. There was one more broad bright orangish one, like an apocalyptic drawing of a comet seen from afar. Several different people were keeping track of either how many they had seen all together or how many they had seen in a given time period. "That's seven," they'd say, or "Forty-nine!"
We left at about 5:15, benumbed and delighted. Driving straight into the east for home, we saw four or five more bright orange falling stars, diving straight for the horizon.
P.
