Dear Astronomads,

We had a fantastic Leonids observation from Tiger Den hotel, Sariska, Rajasthan
on the night of 17th-18th november. The observation organised by space consisted
of SPACEians, Astronomicans, Astronomds (a new unofficial gang of amitabh) and
some old AAAD friends, in total there we were 20 people on the site including 4
foregners from US. In addition to this we were also joined by Arvind and Ravi
from Vigyan Prasar and Sandeep Nigam from Star News with his crew who covered
the event.

After a careful delibration over the weather situation and considering several
alternate sites such as dumdama, jim corbet and even Hatu peak in himachal (the
most tempting option), we zeroed in on Sariska (thanks to our weatherman, CB).
Surely the decision was well taken and we were treated to cloud free skies,
except that the it was a little hazy, but we still had a limiting magnitude > 5
and we could see the milky way.


The show began with an extremely bright leonid fireball at around 12:30 AM just
few minutes before the radiant rose up above our horizon. I did not see this
fireball, but i am being told that it was about -5 or -6 mag in brightness and
left a smoke trail which could be seen for well well over 5 minutes.

While CB, Atish and Rohini attempted photographing the event (I think CB
captured few of them) Amitabh, Shotmita and I set out for visual observations
for the IMO report. I must thank Bhavneet for the great support during the
timekeeping and logging in my over 3 hour long patrol and also for helping me
compile the elaborate report along with Rohini for IMO right after from the dawn
sacrificing her sleep.

Here is a report of my observing session early morning of 18th November:

Limiting Magnitude : varied between 5.01 and 5.20
Centre of field : Castor and Pollox
Obstruction of field : None
Cloud cover : None
Total Observation Time : 3 Hours 5 Minutes
Total number of Leonids observed : 78
Total Sporadics observed : 24
Brightest Leonids Observed : 2 of -2.5 Mag.
Average brightness of Leonids observed : Between 0 and 1
Number of Bolides seen : 1
Interval Breakup :
1:45 AM to 2:45 AM IST : 15 Leonids, 9 Sporadic
2:45 AM to 3:50 AM IST : 42 Leonids, 7 Sporadic.
4:05 AM to 5:05 AM IST : 21 Leonids, 8 Sporadic

A more detailed report of the data I submitted to IMO can be accessed at:
<http://umdb.urania.be/v2/obsview/view.php?id=5754>. The data suggests that the
activity certainly was high between 2:45 and 3:45 AM, particularly a 10 minute
interval between 2:45 and 2:55 AM showed a spike in meteor rates as I saw 12
meteors during this 10 minute time, that means a leonid meteor streaked the sky
every 50 seconds or so on average.

It seems that the prediction of "as many as 200-300 meteors per hour" during
21:00 and 22:00 UT (2:30 and 3:30 IST) did not turn out to be exactly so (though
seems to be a definite spike during / around this time), the observations
submitted at IMO so far are suggesting peak ZHRs of about 133. (have a look at:
http://www.imo.net/live/leonids2009/#peak)

---
Fortune Cookie:

Q: Know what the difference between your latest project and putting wings on
an elephant is?
A: Who knows? The elephant *might* fly, heh, heh...
---

Happy Meteor Observing!!!

-----------------------------------
Vikrant Narang

Scientific Officer, SPACE
www.space-india.org

Mobile: (+91)9312286904
E-mail: vikrant@..., vikrant@...

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