Spectacular, wasn't it?!? We took off from home in the Santa Clara valley, in the murky heart of Silicon Valley, and drove all of 20 minutes to the summit of the Santa Cruz mountains, near the second-choice site for Lick Observatory. Not as dark as the open mountain plains, but beautiful, none the less. (Also enjoyed quite mild 14-15C temps!) At the peak, either side of 0200 PST, I was seeing at least one meteor every 5 seconds, and often closer. Call it around 700-800 per hour! Many bright trails that hung in the sky for seconds and longer. One very broad trail hung visible to the eye for at least 5 minutes, and I could see it clearly in the 10x50's, a good 15 minutes after passing... We stayed out over an hour, losing one 9 year old daughter to crawl back into the car, the other to fall asleep. The rest of us held out with the 30-40 others at the roadside, until the shower was beginning to slow down a bit. Definately one to remember!
Dave Bell 37.29N 121.97W On Sun, 18 Nov 2001, Roger Bailey wrote: > At 2:30 MST this morning (9:30 UT) we were standing in an open field under > the clear dark sky to observe the Leonid meteor shower. The temperature > was -6 C. The stars around Orion were bright. The planets, Jupiter and > Saturn, were brilliant. Faint fuzzy objects like the Andromeda galaxy and > the beehive cluster were visible to the naked eye. The constellation Leo the > Lion had just risen above the mountains to the east. > > The Leonid Meteor shower was spectacular. We must have caught the predicted > peak over western North America. In an hour we saw over a hundred of meteors > radiating from Leo. These included bright pulsing fireballs, flaming streaks > as bright as Jupiter, simultaneous parallel streaks, short flashes in the > heart of Leo, 10 degree streaks overhead, multiple dim flashes around the > sky, sometimes several per second. Not a minute went by when we didn't see > something. We watched for over an hour before the cold forced a retreat back > to bed. > > This celestial display lived up to the predictions in the popular press, a > rare event these days. I hope others around the world were able to share > this experience. > > Roger Bailey > Walking Shadow Designs > N 51 W 115 >
