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Leonid Observing Guide
for the night of November 17-18 · back to the LHAS home page

Several people who came to the public star party this summer asked how to watch the Leonids, so here it all is in one place. The short answer: get somewhere dark, get comfortable, get warm, and look up. You don't need a telescope. You don't even need binoculars. Meteors are fast and they're all over the sky, and your eyes are the best instrument for the job.
1. When to look
The meteors seem to come from a spot in the constellation Leo, in the backward question mark of stars called the Sickle. That spot is the radiant. Leo rises in the east around midnight in mid-November, and the higher it climbs, the more meteors you'll see. So the best hours are from about 1 a.m. until dawn starts to brighten the sky, around 5:30. Don't go out at nine in the evening and give up at ten!
2. Where to look
Not right at Leo. Meteors near the radiant are short, because they're coming nearly straight at you. Lie back and look about halfway up the sky, in whatever direction is darkest, and let the meteors come to you. If you trace a Leonid's trail backward, it will point toward the Sickle. Anything that doesn't is a stray, which is fun too, but don't count it.
3. What you'll see
Leonids are the fastest meteors of the year, hitting the air at about 44 miles a second. They're quick and often bright, many with a greenish tinge, and the bright ones can leave a glowing train that hangs in the sky for a few seconds, sometimes longer, and twists in the upper winds. If you see one, keep watching the spot. Last year we saw several trains that lasted long enough to point out to the person in the next chair.
4. What to bring
It will be cold. Mid-November at 3 a.m. on a hilltop can be in the twenties, and you'll be lying still for hours. Dress for ten degrees colder than the forecast.
  • Reclining lawn chair or a foam pad and a tarp
  • Sleeping bag, plus a blanket underneath you
  • Warm hat, gloves, two pairs of socks, boots
  • Thermos of coffee or cocoa, and a snack
  • A red flashlight. Put red cellophane or a red balloon over a regular one, two layers. White light ruins everybody's night vision for twenty minutes.
  • A watch, a clipboard and a pencil (pens freeze), or a small tape recorder to call out your counts
5. How to count
Counts are only useful to science if they're done the same way, so here's what our teams will do:
  • Watch your part of the sky without breaks for a set time, usually an hour.
  • Write down the time you start and stop, in Universal Time if you can (add five hours to our local time in November).
  • Tally every meteor, and mark whether it's a Leonid or not.
  • Every half hour, note the faintest star you can see near where you're looking, so the counts can be corrected for sky conditions.
  • Note clouds, and how long you looked away (to pour coffee, for instance).
If a real storm happens, you won't be able to keep up with tally marks. Switch to the tape recorder and just say "one" every time. We'll count them up in the morning.
6. Taking pictures
Any 35mm camera with a "B" setting will do. Put it on a sturdy tripod, use a normal 50mm lens wide open (f/2 or so), 400 speed film, and a locking cable release. Focus on infinity, aim about halfway up the sky and off to one side of Leo, and open the shutter for five to ten minutes at a time. You'll get star trails, and with luck, a bright meteor slicing across them. Take a lot of frames. Most will have nothing, and that's normal. Wipe the lens now and then because it will dew over. Then take the film to the drugstore and tell them to print every frame, even the ones that look black.
7. Don't expect a miracle (but be ready for one)
A storm means more than a thousand meteors an hour, and the forecasts say our part of the world will probably miss the peak. We may see fifty an hour, or a couple of hundred, or a dozen and a lot of clouds. Nobody knows, and that's the fun of it. The last Leonid storm seen from North America was in 1966. There may be good chances for another year or two after this one, and then the comet's fresh dust is behind us and we wait another thirty-odd years. So come out. Bring the kids. Worst case, you'll have a cold night under the stars with good company and a thermos of cocoa. There are worse ways to spend a Wednesday.



Questions? Want to join a counting team? [email protected]
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Guide last updated Saturday, September 25, 1999, by Janet Pulaski