Leonid meteor shower

Forums Meteors Leonid meteor shower

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  • #626538
    Alex Pratt
    Participant

    During gaps in the cloud cover my video cameras are recording a few of the slow Northern and Southern Taurids, and the speedy Leonids. They are the swiftest of the major meteor showers, entering the atmosphere at 71 km/s and bright Leonids can leave glowing trains.

    Leonid maximum is expected about 11:30 UT on Nov 17 (occurring just after Full Moon which can hamper visual observation of the shower) and their ZHR on Nov 16/17 and 17/18 should be around 10. Leonids will be active to the end of this month.

    The IMO’s 2024 Meteor Shower Calendar also notes these predictions:

    Maslov – Maximum on Nov 17 04h UT, ZHR 15 – 20
    Vaubaillon – encounter with the 1633 trail on Nov 14 16h 37m UT – faint meteors?
    Sato – encounter with the 1733 trail from Nov 19 23h 53m UT to Nov 20 00h 54m UT – low rates?

    (The attached image is of a Leonid as it shot down through Tau.)

    Alex.

    #626569
    James Lancashire
    Participant
    #626571
    Robin Leadbeater
    Participant

    Like the comment there about it being green so it must be space junk as the guy who told him has a PhD in physics so must be right !

    Here are the details based on UKMON cameras

    https://archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2024/orbits/202411/20241115/20241115_181207.913_UK/index.html

    Cheers
    Robin

    #626576
    Steve Brown
    Participant

    I did a couple of hours of visual observing on 16-17 November and didn’t see any Leonids at all. I think the Moon was just too bright. My camera did catch a faint one on video though: https://youtu.be/61K5SI3rj08

    #626583
    Callum Potter
    Keymaster

    My meteor camera picked up 7 last night, over what was quite a cloudy (snowy) and moonlit night.

    Leonids

    Also posted on my member album
    https://britastro.org/observations/observation.php?id=20241118_135908_7bed7ec60b7df58f

    Callum

    #626586
    Bill Ward
    Participant

    Hi All,
    I had partially clear skies 16/17 and last night 17/18 was completely clear. Despite the very bright moon I captured a reasonable haul of Leonids plus others.
    Got one really interesting spectrum at 20241118_013019UT. Unfortunately and extremely annoyingly I didn’t get the blue end. The UKMON reports site has it listed as a Leonid. This is the first Leonid spectrum I’ve captured with my latest HiReMS II cameras.
    Yet to be fully analysed.

    Bill.

    • This reply was modified 1 week, 6 days ago by Bill Ward. Reason: typo
    #626590
    Alex Pratt
    Participant

    Nov 17/18 waw clouded out here until 03 UT, then the bright Moon and hazy sky restricted my south-facing cameras. They captured up to 5 Leonids per camera; my north-facing cameras got twice that number. In conditions like that, the UFO cameras outperform the RMS ones.
    Nov 16/17 had variable cloud and recorded even fewer meteors.

    As well as Leonids, the sigma Hydrids were active, the trickle of Northern Taurids continued and a few alpha Monocerotids were detected. A clear sky (and without the blazing Moon) would have been quite productive.

    Alex.

    #626626
    Mark Phillips
    Participant

    According to UK Meteor Network data, last night was a higher peak than 17 Nov. Still going strong.

    Mark

    #626673
    Mike German
    Participant

    Radio Meteoroid counts of back scatter at 143.05MHz on my 3 systems show a gently increasing count from 17th.
    The data is for all streams though.
    Clouds not a problem and I don’t think attenuation through falling snow is an issue 🙂

    • This reply was modified 1 week, 2 days ago by Mike German.
    Attachments:
    #626716
    Bill Ward
    Participant

    Hi,
    Now worked through the partial spectrum of the Leonid. Attached is an annotated graph with a few lines identified for reference.

    Some other features, marked A, B and C are positively interesting. The element lines will always be where they are, if you see what I mean but it’s how they are expressed meteor to meteor that is fascinating.

    The line marked Si? is only a tentative identification but given the strength of the ionised Si lines it is at least plausible as I can’t find anything else that might produce such a strong emission.

    Both A and B span a few nm each. A is a zone densely packed with Fe and Ti, (I don’t think I’ve ever identified an individual Ti line). Of course there is no guarantee that there is Ti in there but it’s a maybe. B is likewise densely packed with Fe lines but this time the accompanying element is Ca, and also likewise, is it actually there…? In amongst this region there is also a line from ionised Beryllium, that would be good one to see!

    At C there are couple of weak Fe lines surrounded by Ni lines. These peek above the strong absorption caused by water vapour in the atmosphere.

    The distinctive group long-ward of 740nm are strong atmospheric N lines blended with close Fe lines.

    Roll on the Geminids!

    Cheers,
    Bill.

    #626749

    Hello everyone
    your conversation has piqued my interest. A few months ago I devoted myself, for a while, to meteoric observation. Exactly, not to the photographic or visual capture of meteor strips, but to the detection of stratospheric dust caused by impacting meteors. For this I have taken my cue from the following article.

    https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atot/25/9/2008jtecha1090_1.xml

    I will not elaborate, I will only say that I have only partially succeeded. The main flaw was the way of acquiring the detected brightness values with a telephoto lens D100 mm f500. In fact I wrote down by hand the values returned by a photocell (taken from an old Zenith camera). In short, I have abandoned the intentions; however, I return to that idea from time to time.

    Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

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