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LEONID COUNTDOWN 53 days until the night of Wednesday, November 17. Storm? Shower? Clouds? Only one way to find out. Read our Leonid observing guide >> |
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Welcome, fellow sky watchers! The Lamplighter Hill Astronomical Society is 41 amateur astronomers, from beginners who
just got a telescope for Christmas to members who grind their own mirrors. We meet once a month in town, and we observe
whenever the Moon and the clouds allow at our dark site, a hilltop hayfield on the Kessler family farm about twenty miles
out, where the sky still goes all the way down to the horizon.
I'm Janet Pulaski, club secretary and observing chairman, and I keep this page. By day I'm a pharmacist. By night, well, you can guess. |
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The Big One: Leonids 1999 Every November the Earth passes through dust left behind by Comet Tempel-Tuttle, and we get the Leonid meteor shower. Most years it's a modest show, ten or fifteen an hour. But the comet comes around about every 33 years, and in the years right after it passes, the Earth can plow through a fresh, thick stream of dust. Then the Leonids can put on a storm. It happened in 1833, when people across the eastern United States thought the stars were falling. It happened in 1966, when observers in the Southwest saw meteors coming down like snow. Tempel-Tuttle came back around in early 1998, and last November we got a sky full of bright fireballs, many hours ahead of schedule. This year some of the experts are predicting another storm, with the peak around 2:00 Universal Time on November 18. That's 9:00 p.m. our time on the 17th, which is the bad news: Leo won't have risen yet here, so Europe and the Middle East are in the best position for the peak. The good news is that nobody knows for sure. The predictions have been wrong before, in both directions, and even if we miss the peak, the hours before dawn on the 18th could still be the best Leonids any of us have seen. The Moon will be just past first quarter and should set around one in the morning, leaving dark skies until dawn. So we are going to be out there. |
Club Leonid Watch
  When: Wednesday night, November 17, into Thursday morning the 18th. Gates open at 11 p.m.
Serious counting from about 1 a.m. until twilight. Where: the dark site. Members know the way. Guests, e-mail me for directions and I'll mail you a map. Cloudy? We try again the next night, Thursday into Friday. Rates will be lower but it's still worth it. Bring: a reclining lawn chair, sleeping bag, hat, gloves, a thermos, and only a red flashlight. Full list in the observing guide. Please: park with your headlights pointed away from the field, and turn them off before you pull in. The whole field will thank you.
We'll be organizing counting teams, each person watching one part of the sky, and sending our counts in to the International Meteor Organization, which collects reports from observers all over the world. If you've never counted meteors before, come anyway. We'll teach you in about two minutes. |
Coming Up
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Club Notes Eclipse report: Bill Tennant saw the August 11 total eclipse from Hungary under
clear skies, and says it was two minutes he'll remember forever. He has promised to keep the slide show under an hour.
We'll see. Loaner scope: the club's 8-inch Dobsonian is available to members for a month at a time.
It's back from Frank's this week, with a new finder and only a little dog hair. Light pollution: Thank you to everyone who wrote to the county about the new lights at
the highway interchange. The commissioners have agreed to look at shielded fixtures. Every little bit of dark sky counts. Dues are $15 a year, $20 for families. That covers the newsletter, the insurance on the
dark site, and the coffee.
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