SUMMARY
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Taurids /Leonids Long tail Earth Grazers- Early evening visual treats of Taurids fireball and fantastic long and thin trail (60 -110degree) Leonids lasting for a couple of good seconds - with entire trail visible . Not unlike the Perseids. |
| At peak time the Leonids Arrival Rate - is evidently lower than the Leonids seen in Jordan 99. It was well below my expectation. I even delayed firing the T-70 arrays waiting for the sky to fill up with meteors. Eventually I did after realizing this IS the rate and nothing higher. |
| Leonids fireball - brightness / Persistent trains- What it lack in arrival rate it make up with high percentage of bright meteors. Also 'pairings' were evident where the 2nd meteor appears to follow similar or close trajectory of the first. I could not stop imaging that spatial density of the debris that got burn up perhaps were closely together - in clumps of frozen flake in the cool vacuum space before ending up in fiery flurry. Or are they coincidental in close line-of- sight? There were five to six meteors that left a visible tubular trains or 'glow-worm' for at least 5 -6 seconds. One lingered for so long that I was able to video record its slow dispersal. One ground illuminating / shadow casting Leonids lit up the ground. It was absolutely AMAZING. |
| Watec-902H & aspheric 3.8 mm f/0.8 auto-iris lens 89 x69 degree FOV or 63,00 sq degree (~1/4 of the sky) - a total of 613 meteors brighter than mag 1.5+were recorded ( first pass visual play back count) in 1.88 effective hours (113 min). LM cutoff is >1.0 mag. ( Details see Leonids Video) |
| Canon 50mm T-70 arrays: A total of 174 meteors were captured in 5 /6 array cameras. Total effective exposure time is or ~216 min or 3.06 hrs per camera with a total coverage of 5x20x40 or 40,000 sq degree or ~ 1/6 of the sky. |
| Wide angle Lens - 8 mm f/3,4 Peleng , Sigma 15mm f/2,8 mm lens captured many multiple leonids. More than 30 turned up in ~ 1/2 hours of exposure. Many bright short or no tail Leonids were detected at very low elevation in the Meteor Rich Layer just above the horizon. |