Fireballs_and

A Lyrid meteor can be seen above the Chilean Andes, traveling horizontally toward the left (west) edge of the picture. The photo was taken near Cerro Tololo in the Atacama Desert, Chile on 22 April 2001. Exposure started at 06:29 UT and lasted for 630 seconds with a 50mm f/1.7 Pentax Lens on Fuji Press 800 negative film.

"I woke up at 03:30 local time in the hope of seeing one or two meteors, as we still had 13 hours prior to the predicted peak of the Leonid meteor shower. To my astonishment I could count 26 meteors of negative magnitude in 50 minutes of observation, with approximately 50% of them being fireballs. Three fireballs flying in a parallel path all the way to the horizon is something that you don't see very often. I was happy to witness such a tremendous spectacle... A blue one of magnitude -13 (photo below) produced shadows and an image of itself reflected on the Atlantic Ocean. The total duration of the luminous flight was around five seconds and fragmentation occurred two times within one second, briefly illuminating the night sky like daytime. Unforgettable... Four sonic booms were heard 8 minutes later, synchronously with the fireball's fragmentation appearance. Its smoke train persisted for well over two minutes to the unaided eye, although I did not pay much attention to it after what I had witnessed. Looking forward to seeing more fireballs the next night, I started to observe at 02:10 local time. Nonetheless, the fireballs didn't show up. All we had were several meteors of magnitude -3 at best." A whooshing sound was clearly heard simultaneously with the fireball's flight. Now (Nov. 2001) I know it was probably due to VLF radio waves being detected audibly by some unknown mechanism.

We saw 204 Leonids brighter than magnitude +3 between 05:00 and 07:10 UT on the morning of November 18 despite strong moonlight and light pollution. Very often they came in pairs, either separated by a few degrees or following in the path of another meteor after a couple of seconds. Two even outshined Jupiter! The photo was made with a 28mm f/2.8 Vivitar Lens on Fuji Super G Plus 800 negative film with a 160-second exposure started at 06:32 UT.

Very bright and fast meteors of all colors were seen dropping everywhere across the sky above Reaiche Observatory in Salvador, Brazil from 1:30 to 5:30 a.m. local time (UT-2.) The show started at 03:28 UT when we saw a -6 mag. orange earth-grazer that extended from horizon to horizon. Half of the Leonids were magnitude zero or brighter and most of them left afterglows, lasting no longer than a second or two at most. Many meteors occurred within seconds of each other and fireballs also appeared to come in clusters frequently. The fireballs were the best since 1998's event, but this time there was a much greater number of red fireballs. The highest concentration of bright meteors during our observing session occurred within 8 minutes: I counted eleven Leonids of negative magnitude from 05:48 to 05:56 UT. We saw so many meteors and fireballs during the four-hour period under 4.9 magnitude skies that we could not take pictures and count Leonids at the same time. Although astronomical twilight had started at 4:40 a.m. local time, we kept seeing fireballs until 26 minutes before sunrise, three hours before the predicted peak of the 1767 dust trail over the U.S.A. We made 27 photos after the start of nautical twilight hoping to catch a fireball in "daylight" to no avail. All photos on November 18 were taken with a 50mm f/1.7 Pentax Lens on Fuji Superia 1600 negative film:

I saw a -9 magnitude fireball near Capella at 06:07 UT, which left a persistent train that remained visible for over ten minutes with the unaided eye. The animated sequence of photos shows the evolution of the smokey train drifting in high-altitude winds.

Leonid in Perseus at top, with an enlarged view at image on the right. 05:20 UT, 50-second exposure.

Red Leonid in Auriga. 05:45 UT, 9-minute exposure.

November 19
We saw fewer and mostly fainter meteors than the night before. We started observing nine hours past the predicted peaks for the 1699 and the 1866 dust trails, which occurred over Asia. Even so, we could capture on film several bright Leonids. We saw 82 meteors ranging from +3 mag. to -5 mag. under NELM ~ 5.1 from 1:30 to 4:40 a.m. local time (UT-2.) We counted another 22 meteors until 5:08 a.m., well into the start of nautical twilight. All photos on November 19 were made with a 50mm f/1.7 Pentax Lens on Fuji Press 800 negative film:

Orange Leonid in Auriga. 06:09 UT, 3-minute exposure.

Green Leonid in Auriga, with a close-up view at right. 06:18 UT, 27-second exposure.

A Leonid in the Southern skies, at upper left. 06:51 UT, 30-second exposure.

Leonid fireball in Taurus over Itaparica Island, well into the start of astronomical twilight. 07:01 UT, 160-sec exposure.

Close-up view of the previous photo, with the green-turned-red fireball near the Pleiades.

Some of the above photos have been published in:
Astronomy Picture of the Day (November 30, 2001) *For an APOD mirror site, please click here, here, here or here.
Earth Science Picture of the Day (November 23, 2001)
Gary Kronk's Comets & Meteor Showers
Leonids 2001 Meteor Gallery
The Universe Today
Near-Live Leonid Watching System (NASA HQ)
SPACE.com
The Cosmic Mirror (Germany)
Society for Popular Astronomy (UK)
Taiwan Astro Service (Chinese characters)
Weekend Nightly News at NBC TV network
Royal Observatory Greenwich (UK)
International Meteor Organization (IMO)
Altrincham & District Astronomical Society (UK)
CD-ROM "Imagine the Universe!" (HEASARC/NASA/GSFC)

Those two nights of 2001 will be remembered forever... I saw one of the greatest spectacles of my life... we shot 112 exposures with a single camera set up on a tripod, but we often stopped taking pictures and just watched, while wowed and ooohhhed in disbelief...

2002 Meteor Shower

November 19
Having arrived from a trip to Asia only two days before, we observed the 1767 peak from Brazil, even though it occurred as predicted over Western Europe. As expected, the full moon made observing conditions of the Leonids the worst imaginable reducing the number of visible faint meteors and smoke trains. For that reason we had a limiting magnitude of 3.7 with the unaided eye, which made the shower not as spectacular as the fireball outburst of 1998 or the meteor storm of 2001. Even so we saw a marvelous display in the early morning hours of November 19. The Earth encountered Leonid dust trails created at the 1767 (7 revolutions old) and 1866 (4 revolutions old) returns of Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle. According to first analysis by the IMO, the peak of the first maximum was at 04:10 UT with ZHR=2350 and the second peak was at 10:48 UT with ZHR=2660. We observed from 1:36 to 5:11 a.m. local time (UT-2) and the brightest Leonids that we saw were several -5 magnitude fireballs. Amongst the many bright meteors, a couple of earth-grazers were the most memorable. Residual smoke trains were very frequent but could hardly be seen for more than a few seconds, let alone be captured on film due to moonlight interference. The three photos below are cropped images taken with a 50mm f/1.7 Pentax Lens on Fuji Superia 400 film:

Leonid in Canis Major. 04:05 UT, 40-second exposure.

Leonid in the Southern constellations of Vela and Carina. 05:07 UT, 40-second exposure.

Another Leonid in Canis Major. 05:13 UT, 15-second exposure.

A gravitational perturbation by Jupiter in 2029 will tug Comet Tempel-Tuttle's orbit away from Earth, and probably not until 2098 will hopes for a Leonid storm like the ones we all saw in the past four years be justified. I will miss those dramatic meteor and fireball displays... 1998 and 2001 will be remembered as years when we had the best fireball displays in a lifetime.

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