Closed cell pads . . . check
Therma-rester . . . check
Parka . . . check
Winter bag . . . check
Pillow . . . check
Towel (vital when travelling the universe) . . . check
Crystal clear sky . . . check
Superior, we have a go. Cold temps so no fog (unlike earlier this week, when I became lost in a parking lot). Yippee! I’m off for the night on a beach in the middle of nowhere.
Hope you all have a terrific night!
I shoulda noted before: there is another meteor shower that peaks (weakly) in a couple of weeks. It’s called the Taurids, and you might see a few tonight. They will be heading away from Taurus (the V shaped group of stars above Orion; one of the stars is a bright orange, and Saturn is near there now as well), which is high to the south at 2:00 a.m. local time (for those north of the Equator). Those meteors will tend to move in a different direction than the Leonids. Two years ago, when I was out all night, I saw maybe 20 from each shower. The different directions were obvious, and very cool.
I should also have posted a link to Heavens-Above at http://www.heavens-above.com. You can enter your latitude and longitude (there is a list of locations too; pick the nearest city) and you can get a map of the sky. It’s a great help.
I just saw one! I am now back indoors, getting another beer :D, but just a few minutes ago, one whizzed overhead! It looked almost pinkish-purplish, and had a trail!! I am so psyched now.
I saw several. May have gotten a few on film. It’s 3:00. I’m going to bed.
Hmmm, not much so far. I sat out back for 20 minutes, saw 3. I live in the country, so there’s plenty of dark. West coast location, the radiant point is just above the nearby treetops right now.
There’s still an hour until the peak. I guess I’ll stay up and try again in a while.
There’s clouds rolling in again from the west, but I did manage to see a few of them. I saw three that occurred almost simultaneously. I’m getting a cup of cocoa and going back out for a while.
My husband and son want to stay asleep. Oh, well. I’ll just watch 'em with Tabithina the cat. 
:yawn:
Yeah, stayin’ up for this one, luckily I only have to be into work after 4 pm.
There’s too much light pollution and cloud cover where I am. A couple of friends are driving out to the country, but I’m too tired to stand around freezing my butt off for another 30 minutes. G’night everyone.
Dammit, we finally remember to set an alarm and it’s completely overcast and foggy to boot.
Came in to warm up. damn it’s chilly tonight.
1:45-2:15pm Pacific, counted 79 meteors in 30 minutes. Not as good as expected, I guess.
I saw one probable ‘earth-grazer’, much slower-moving with bright orange head and neon-green tail. Very cool.
I’ll probably go back out for 20 minutes, then call it a night.
whoops, make than am.
East of Cleveland Ohio checking in here.
Just came inside after about an hour of sky-gazing. Saw 100+ in that time. No fireballs to speak of, but did see a few that left a trail lasting several seconds.
<yawn> back to bed. The GrizzCub’s too young to appreciate this, and he’ll be getting up at his regular time and Daddy & Mommy have to be ready!
East Coast, just north of Boston. Saw about 400 meteors between 4:20 and 5:50 when it became too light to see much.
Maybe 5% of these were very bright. Most of the bright ones were in the East/North quadrants of the sky. Lots of simultaneous trails.
I’d say that the Leonids checked in at the low end of most estimates, but it was still easily the most spectacular meteor shower I’ve ever seen.
I saw about 30 in the last 15 minutes here in central NC – this from a city location where I couldn’t see the whole sky. So a pretty good show, although no fireballs or masses of trails.
It was pretty cool, though I had to call it a night at around 5:20am ET since it started to fog up. I went to Mickie Gordon Park, near Middleburg, VA (about an hour away from SterlingManor). I don’t think it was far enough to escape the bright lights of Washington DC, but any further and I would risk stranding my father at work. It was pretty active around 3:30 am and then again around 5:15am (right before I left. A lot of the meteors wre rather faint, but we were competing with late arriving skywatchers, the occassional truck along route 50 and of course the fog-diffused background light of Washington DC.
Yes, I stayed up because I cannot sleep because I have $%&^#&^! insomnia. So I went out and looked up until I thought my ass had frozen, and saw maybe five shooting stars. I’d’ve been pissed if I didn’t know I’d be up anyway because God forbid I get any flipping sleep!
My nights: No sex; no sleep; no stars.
Not that I’m bitter.
Jodi, 3:48 am
Southern New Hampshire
About what finagle said. Averaged maybe 5 per minute from 4:00 to 5:30, tapering off til dawn. Still seeing a few when it got too bright to see them about 6:00.
Many long bright trails (all white), with the best ones in the east. No fireballs. Definitely worth staying up for.
Same as Finagle & Kalashnikov. I’m near the Catskill Mountains, and had a very good dark site.
I stopped counting after 200, but saw many more after that. At times there were over 3 per second. And the “wow” ones were incredible. Very cool!
Freezed my ass off though…
Podkayne’s Leonids report:
I went out around 4 AM EST, and the shower was already nicer than many I’ve turned out for! I clocked about ten meteors a minute. By 4:20, it was starting to ramp up.
Man, those buggers are fast. And bright. Even the little ones left trails that persisted a few seconds. I’ve never seen a shower where it was so obvious that the trails all pointed back toward the radiant (which, it seemed to me, was a couple degrees west of where Spaceweather.com said it would be, though maybe they were just being schematic–it’s in Leo’s head.)
I was suprised at the number of nice little fireballs, mostly with a lovely red color. I saw one fireball that went off like a flashbulb! It might have cast shadows, but I wasn’t wasting any of my field of view on the ground. It left a curved (and I don’t mean arcing, I mean s-shaped) trail that persisted for over a minute! Its direction and speed was consistent with being a Leonid, but I suppose it could have been incidental.
The peak from my POV was around 5:10-5:30. That was when I was seeing 3-5 meteors in the sky at once. It was stunning to watch along the southern horizon, where the meteors seemed like a real “shower”, streaking “down” toward the horizon. No estimates of the rate–I had tired of fiddling with the timer on my watch and just sat back to enjoy the show.
By quarter of six, the sky brightness was ramping up, either due to more light pollution as people were getting out and about, or maybe a little water vapor creeping up, so I went inside, and the show was clearly over. I’m glad I waited up and froze my toes.
My mother and I were counting, and she ran a stopwatch while I counted. In the portion of the sky I was watching, at 4:30am, it was 9 per minute on average; at 5:00am, it was 13 per minute; and at 5:30 it was 11 per minute. Averaging it out, that’s around 660 meteors per hour. Probably far more, as at several points we stopped counting when they were coming at a rate of greater than one a second.
Stunning.
It’s not like the Loenids in '66, but far and away the best I’ve seen in recent memory.
Everything from little pin-pricks from the ones more-or-less coming straight down, to hair-fine streaks, to broad streaks crossing 30 degrees or more of the sky, In singles, multiples, parallel, and crossing each other. Some vanished quietly, while others blew-up in sudden bursts and flashes. Low on the horizon, some, that were too faded by the light pollution to see the trails, made their presence known by their strobes as they detonated. One particularly impressive meteor calved just above the horizon, with both daughter fragments detonating just after calving.
I’m so greatful that it’s been a warm November, and I don’t expect to see a show like this again in my life.