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Re: LEONID Report - Northern England, 04.00, Nov 18

In a message dated 18/11/99 04:13:24 GMT Standard Time, STUARTATK@aol.com 
writes:

<< Well, I wrote the night off too soon! As I was closing down my computer 
after 
 writing my previous posting, just after 2.00am, I decided to take One Last 
 Look out the window, "just in case", as you do... and saw the Pointers of 
The 
 Plough breaking thru the cloud. Then a streak of light below them...! >>

Good one!....glad to hear that the cloud layer broke elsewhere in the UK too!
The weather report said that only Fife, Scotland (me!) and Margate in the 
South of England had clear skies so I thought it might have been a 
non-starter for many observers.

My bleary-eyed, sleepy post at 4am this morning gave few details, so here's 
an update.
There was a sharp increase in Leonid activity for us between 2am and 3am GMT 
and meteors were visible in almost any part of the sky that I cared to look 
at. Several arrived together in pairs so were probably the same meteor that 
fragmented early in flight.
At it's very best, Leonids were visible every 2 to 3 seconds but it's hard to 
be specific here....sometimes 3 arrived at once, then there might be a 10 
second lull before the next one appeared. It was a very short and sharp peak, 
if indeed it was the peak at all.
Last year's display gave us a real mixed bag of magnitude including many 
bright exploding Leonids that left smoke trails hanging in the sky for 
several minutes. This year, I saw more Leonids (~200?) but no exploding 
meteors at all....most were much fainter than in '98 so I'm not sure what 
that's telling us.

I finished observing at 5am when the sky was perfectly clear - Leonids were 
still arriving but typically at intervals of several minutes by this time.

All in all it was good, but it could have been so much better!!

How was the show further East of us?.....Alex, Bernd, Piper?

Cheers,
Rob.

Fernlea Meteorites
http://hometown.aol.com/fernlea4/forsale.html
Milton of Balgonie,
Fife. KY7 6PY
United Kingdom
Tel: +44-(0)1592-751563
Fax: +44-(0)1592-751060
Email: FERNLEA4@aol.com

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