Leonids Meteor Shower - Tonight, Nov 17th

Hi all,

once again, one of the year's best loved showers is set for a cloudy night in it looks. Every year, this shower does produce some unexpected results, and is more famous for its 33 year peak, which in 1833 and 1866 is said to have produced a couple thousand meteors during the course of 2 nights each time. Unfortunately, following the 2001/2002 cycle, we will not see a peak like that for many decades to come. Here is an excerpt from Neill's November Sky Guide :

The Leonid shower peaks on the 17th. It produces very fast meteors and has a ZHR of 20. However this is not a good year for this shower as a 69% illuminated waning gibbous moon in Cancer rising at 20:30 on the evening of the 17th badly disrupts the shower. If you do want to try and observe any activity, please note that the radiant does not rise until around midnight.

Still, despite the rising Moon, the Leonids have always given a few fireballs at maximum, so you don't know what you might see.

Seanie.

According to Met Eireann ( www.met.ie ) the forecast for tonight is "A few showers tonight but otherwise dry and clear with lowest temperatures of 6 to 9C." So there may be some breaks in the cloud.

Hi everyone,

Hope you had a good weekend.

The info below is from one of Terry Moseley's e-mails.

POSSIBLE LEONID OUTBURST: There is a chance of a minor outburst of Leonid meteors on the evening of 16-17 November, centred on 01.32 on 17 November, with a ZHR of around 100. (The ZHR is the Zenithal Hourly Rate: the rate which would be seen by an experienced observer, with the radiant in the zenith, in VERY dark skies. Actual observed rates would be much lower).

This is based on a prediction that the Earth will encounter the edge of the trail of particles emitted during the 1466 perihelion of the parent comet, (55P/Tempel-Tuttle) at 01.32 on 17 November. That was 16 periodic revolutions ago, so it's quite hard to be definite, but past predictions have been remarkably accurate. Indeed, the actual predictions indicated a ZHR of around 1000, but this was toned down to 100 to be on the safe side! The enhanced activity might last for about 6 hours altogether, centred on that time, although that also is very far from a firm prediction. The radiant will be fairly well up in the East at the relevant time, so even though the view will be spoiled by a brightish waning moon, it will be worth having a look.

There is a prediction for another lesser outburst from a trail from the 1932 passage of the comet, but it is predicted to occur at 21.38 on Nov 18, well before the radiant rises in Ireland. The radiant is located in the 'Sickle of Leo'.

See: www.imcce.fr/en/ephemerides/phenomenes/m...TABASE/Leonids/2008/

skynotes wrote:

The info below is from one of Terry Moseley's e-mails.

POSSIBLE LEONID OUTBURST: There is a chance of a minor outburst of Leonid meteors on the evening of 16-17 November, centred on 01.32 on 17 November, with a ZHR of around 100.

Hi John,
thanks for adding that. I think that was meant for the early hours of this morning though, rather than tonight, so the burst in question has passed unfortunately.

Seanie

Judging by the current sat info it looks bad.
Still worth a peek out the window at 12.

Yeah, cloudy here too, but worth getting up a little later on to have a peek

Keith..