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Leonids Around the Clock
A NASA-led team of astronomers will travel around the globe this weekend to monitor the 2001 Leonid meteor storm. Catch their reports live on the web!
Listen to this story via streaming audio, or a downloadable file (help).
November 15, 2001
"[It was] the worst blow ever suffered by astronomy in the eyes of the public." So wrote astronomer Charles Olivier after the Leonid meteor shower of 1899.
Olivier's colleagues had predicted a furious meteor storm that year -- and millions of sky watchers were paying attention. Even folks normally indifferent to the heavens were outdoors when the storm was due to erupt. But they saw little. The 1899 Leonids were a conspicuous dud, revealing only how poorly astronomers of the day were able to forecast meteor activity.
Meteors seem to fill the Little Dipper in this 1966 image of a Leonid meteor storm captured by A. Scott Murrell. Like most Leonid storms, this outburst surprised sky watchers. This bright Leonid fireball was photographed during the storm of 1966 by James W. Young, from Wrightwood, California.
Now ... fast forward 100 years.
In 1999 astronomers were once again forecasting a Leonid meteor storm, but this time they would not be embarrassed. Thousands of shooting stars appeared over Europe and the Middle East -- right on schedule. Onlookers were amazed as the storm crested on Nov. 18th within 5 minutes of its predicted maximum!
Times, it seemed, had changed.
(Full Story Here)
Cheers,
Dan
Leonids Around the Clock . . .