Leo, the famous constellation of the lion, is a little bit more famous right now, around the turn of the century. That's because Leo appears to be the source of all the meteors seen as the November meteor shower called the Leonids. And in recent years the shower has produced meteor storm conditions.
A Leonid meteor is a piece of sand-sized debris expelled from Comet Tempel-Tuttle 55P/Tempel-Tuttle). This comet and the ejected debris follow an orbit about our Sun, and the part of the orbit near Earth is superposed in front of the constellation Leo. So, when Earth crosses this orbit, the radiant point of falling debris appears in Leo.
And in years near the time the comet passes perihelion, the Leonid shower can produce a storm--a condition of many meteors visible across the sky at one time! This last happened in 1966, when up to 40 meteors per second were seen. (I missed that one.) The comet has an orbital period of about 33 years and passed closest to the sun on in February 28,1998. I looked on the morning of November 17, 1998 when conditions were "predicted" to be good for a storm. However, a rate of only 250-300 meteors per hour was visible, not the thousands to hundreds of thousands per hour of a true storm.
Still a nice display. I took some photographs using a 35mm camera and 400-speed black and white film.
I watched on Thursday morning, November 18, 1999, and saw few meteors. November 2000 found me clouded out in LA. In 2001, I went back to Kansas only to have rain all night long at the time of the huge storm seen by others.
The first and the last became the storms I saw. On Tuesday morning, November 19, 2002, I started watching at 145AM Pacific Standard Time. The skies were clear. There was a bright nearly full moon. The Santa Ana winds were warm, so I took off my sweatshirt. No action whatsoever until about 215, when a few 2nd magnitude meteors were visible. Then, between 230 and about 330, they came roughly one per minute in the part of the sky I was watching. Only a handful were brighter than mag. 0. So this storm was just a spritzer of standard meteors. There were no fireballs. My wife wandered out and was lucky enough to see the brightest one, somewhat dimmer than Jupiter.
Three pictures captured Leonids. All were taken with Kodak Max 800 film, standard processing, through a 28mm Pentax lens at f/2.8. Exposures were two minutes in the bright moonlight.
Leonids photos
by Derek Wallentinsen
Taken from Wichita, Kansas on Tuesday 17 November 1998.
Taken from San Pedro, California on Tuesday 19 November 2002.
(Click on the thumbnails for a larger image.)
-2 or brighter bolide above my house. Radiant visible in picture. Approximately 1030 UT, November 17,1998. 50mm lens at f/2, exposure two minutes.
The Leonid bolide blow-up. The bright star above the meteor is Cor Caroli.
A -6 magnitude meteor left this train. Approximately 2-minute exposure with the 50mm lens at f/2 beginning about 30 seconds after the green-blue fireball. 10h UT 17 November with radiant in picture. I wish I had captured the fireball itself!
Faded train from the fireball. As above, exposure from three to five minutes post-fireball.
Zero to +1 magnitude fireball's train below Big Dipper. Also fainter meteor south of the Dipper's bowl. Image taken about 11h UT. Taken with a 28mm lens operating at f/2.8, exposure of 3 minutes.
Third magnitude meteor below (right) of Big Dipper. Faint. Approximately 1040 UT. 28mm, f/2.8 3 minutes.
Fast forward to 2002 November 19. This photo shows a zero-magnitude meteor
blazing above San Pedro Bay in the direction of Catalina Island around 245AM
PST. On the sky, it appeared near where Hydra, Pyxis and Antlia intersect. The reddish color was seen in several of the brightest Leonids that
morning.
The next picture has two fainter meteors. Taken around 3AM, November 19th.
The brightest object in the image is the trailed image of Jupiter.
The brightest meteor is around second magnitude. The two stars at right are
Epsilon and Zeta Hydrae in the head of Hydra.
The last photo shows two more Leonid meteors in the same general part of the
sky (between Regulus and Omicron Leonis) about 15 minutes later, 315AM PST. One
is just barely visible against the moon-washed background.
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(unless otherwise credited)