celestial calendar

Fifty times brighter than a full Moon, this Leonid fireball crossed the Hong Kong sky on November 16, 1998, at 20:25
Universal Time. Some observers noticed that the bolide exploded twice during its trajectory, reaching an estimated magnitude
17. A few other Leonids appear at right in this 5-minute exposure, taken by K. K. Chiu with a 15-millimeter f/2.8 fisheye lens
and Kodak ISO 800 film. Notice that all the meteors tracks, traced back, lead to the Sickle of Leo (left of center).

Leonids 2001: The Saga Continues

We now know that Earth is very likely on a collision course with several at perihelion in February 1998, and ever
since then the thickest parts of its mete-
more storm-producing dust trails both this year and next. By Joe Rao oritic swarm, perhaps the richest known,
have been flowing through the same part

W
ell, here we go again.
Another November is here,
and skywatchers will be out
in force awaiting the arrival
of the most famous of all meteor show-
ers, the Leonids. Its been an annual ob-
serving ritual for more than a century,
but in just the last few years the excite-
ment has reached a fever pitch.
For any uninitiated readers, here is a
quick synopsis. The Leonid meteors ap-
pear each year in mid-November. The
particles responsible are products of
Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, and they are
dispersed along roughly the same elon-
gated path the comet takes around the
Sun. For the most part the Leonid stream
is weak at the point where Earth passes
through it, usually producing only about
10 meteors per hour for a typical observ-
er. Their paths, extended backward, sug-
gest they are emanating from the con-
stellation Leo (hence their name). But
every 33 years the parent comet itself
sweeps through the inner solar system,
closely followed by a thicker swarm of
debris. If Earth manages to pass through
this thicker concentration of material,
the upper atmosphere on the forward-
facing side of our planet can blaze with
meteors storming like a fiery rain from
the Sickle of Leo.
Every third of a century, for perhaps
five Novembers in a row, there is a
chance of seeing the Leonids go berserk.
Comet Tempel-Tuttle was most recently
of space that Earth crosses every Novem-
ber 17th and 18th. Will 2001 be a year
that the Leonids enflame the sky with
streaks of luminescence, or will we see
merely a modest display of shooting stars?
Lets check the latest forecasts!
Forecasts Come of Age
The art of predicting meteor storms has
come a long way since the previous
Leonid epoch of the 1960s. Back then the
respected meteor astronomer Charles P.
Olivier wrote in Sky & Telescope, with
some resignation, Any prediction as to
what the Leonids will do in a given year
cannot be much more than an intelligent
guess. Nearly two decades later, in 1981,
Donald K. Yeomans (NASA/Jet Propul-

2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Sky & Telescope November 2001 109
 when the Earth passed very likely on a collision course with sever-
celestial calendar

through the orbit plane of al more storm-producing dust trails both
LEO
Comet Tempel-Tuttle and this year and next. To paraphrase Mark
for those parts of the Twain, rumors of the end of the Leonid
Nov
14 world where Leo was then meteor storms are an exaggeration!
16 at its highest in a dark sky.
18 Sometimes this worked, Introducing Our Leonid Pundits
20 sometimes it didnt; the To provide readers with the very best as-
results were usually off by sessment as to what might occur with
some hours. But more re- this years Leonid shower, Sky & Tele-
cently, astronomers have scope consulted several well-known me-
SOURCE: INTERNATIONAL METEOR ORGANIZATION

Drift of the learned to calculate the lo- teor experts and asked them to provide
Leonid Radiant cations in space of indi- their most up-to-date predictions. The

vidual dust trails those three forecasting teams presented here
long, narrow, extra-dense have had, by far, the greatest success in
sheaves or ribbons of de- anticipating what the Leonids have done
bris that were ejected into in recent years.
space during each of the David Asher of Armagh Observatory
comets last few returns to in Northern Ireland and Robert McNaught
Regulus
the Suns vicinity. Several of the Australian National University and
of the recent Leonid peaks Siding Spring Observatory developed in
A few Leonids can be seen on dates near the peak. The late have been successfully pre- 1998 their now-famous dust trail
Slovak astronomer Lubor Kresk found that the showers radi- dicted to within an hour, model of how meteoroid streams evolve
ant drifts slowly southeastward across Leo, as shown here. even to within minutes. in space. This model received worldwide
And here is the best acclaim after it correctly predicted the
sion Laboratory) argued that a Leonid part: Unlike the old techniques of just a peak of the 1999 Leonid storm to within
storm is most likely when Earth plunges few years ago, which had indicated that six minutes. It was also Asher who
through the dense river of rubble just the upcoming years would be ones of de- helped determine, with two other col-
outside the orbit of Tempel-Tuttle, and cline for the Leonids (supposedly 1999 leagues, that the so-called fireball sur-
just behind the comet itself. This favor- was our last good chance to catch a prise of 1998 came about when particles
able Earth-comet geometry was slated to storm), we now have a radically different shed by Comet Tempel-Tuttle in the year
occur in 1998 and 1999, so those were perspective. We now know that Earth is 1333 were shepherded together by re-
the years when Leonid storms were anx-
iously anticipated.
But 1998 delivered a big surprise. In-
stead of a richer-than-usual normal show-
er (featuring meteors of all brightnesses),
that Novembers hallmark was an 18-
hour bombardment of brilliant fireballs,
at times numbering a few hundred per
hour. Parts of this remarkable display
could be witnessed from almost any-
where in the world. Then, in 1999, a me-
teor storm did indeed materialize, with
Leonids briefly falling at an average rate
of about one per second for observers all
across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
In November 2000, despite the bugaboo
of bright moonlight, a good display but no
storm was observed. What we got were
peak zenithal hourly rates (ZHRs) of 290
over Europe and 480 over North America.
(The zenithal hourly rate, derived from ac-
tual counts, is the number of meteors that
a single observer would have seen if the
showers radiant had been at the zenith in
a sky dark enough for 6.5-magnitude stars
to be visible with the naked eye. Rarely are
conditions this good.) Immediately after a great Leonid fireball crossed the sky over Hong Kong in 1998 (see page
Up until just a few years ago, the 109), Alvis Ko recorded its persistent train as it became contorted in high-atmosphere winds.
Leonid peak was expected to occur just His 3-minute exposure on Fuji G800 film was made with a 28-mm lens at f/3.5.

110 November 2001 Sky & Telescope 2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
 Italian astrophotographer Lorenzo Lovato captured at
least five Leonids in this 9-minute exposure at the height
of the 1998 shower. Note the Sickle of Leo at far left and
the stars of Orion just right of center.
peated passes near the planet Jupiter,
yielding a local concentration within the
broader Leonid stream.
Esko Lyytinen of Finland and Tom Van
Flandern of Meta Research in Washing-
ton, D.C., have also met with success in
modeling the Leonid stream, but they
use a different methodology compared
to other forecasters. Lyytinens Leonid
model is based on my satellite model for
the nature of comets, notes Van Flan-
dern. We assume initially that the mete-
oroids are revolving in stable orbits
around the comet nucleus, and that
eventually, with the help of radiation-
pressure forces, they escape into solar or-
bits of their own. Their 1999 Leonid
forecast for a ZHR of 5,500 compared fa-
vorably with the actual rate of nearly
4,000. Most recently, they developed im-
proved 2001 Leonid predictions with as-
sistance from Markku Nissinen (Finlands
URSA Astronomical Association, Meteor
Section).
Peter Brown is a meteor scientist at the
University of Western Ontario who, for
his doctoral thesis, modeled the evolu-
tion of the Perseid and Leonid meteoroid
streams using visual accounts dating
back as far as 1832. Working with Brown
is William Cooke of Computer Sciences
Corporation and NASAs Marshall Space
Flight Center. Cookes main interest is to
assess potential hazards the Leonids may
pose to Earth-orbiting spacecraft.
Storm-Watch Timetable for 2001
It appears that the Leonids this year will
be most active during the interval from
roughly 10h to 18h Universal Time on
November 18th. As shown on page 114,
at those times North America (especially
the West), the Pacific, Australia, and the
Far East will be having their prime
Leonid-watching hours; the rest of the
world misses out.
Within that eight-hour time frame,
Earth is expected to interact with several
dust trails that were spewed from Comet
Tempel-Tuttle at 33-year intervals during
the past few centuries. Observing condi-
tions will be excellent. The waxing Moon
2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
will be a slender sliver in Ophiuchus,
only 312 days old and thus completely ab-
sent from the after-midnight sky.
Here are the scenarios indicated by
the forecast models of our three teams
of experts.
10h UT (the 1766 trail). For those living
in the Western Hemisphere, Earths interac-
tion with dust particles released during
the comets 1766 return might provide
most viewers with their best opportunity
of the past decade to glimpse a true me-
teor storm.
The Asher model indicates a peak
time of 10:01 UT on November 18th,
while Lyytinen believes that it will come
nearly a half hour later, at 10:28 UT.
Both models are quite close in terms of
the intensity of this prospective out-
burst, assigning a ZHR in the range of
2,000 to 2,500 meteors. Asher and Mc-
Naught, however, have placed a question
mark next to this particular case. They
note that the 1766 dust trail, as it e-
volved, may have become more and
more stretched out in space.
Sky & Telescope November 2001 111
 6,000 Left: How did our experts fare in their Leonid
celestial calendar
5,500
predictions in 1999 and 2000? For four differ-
5,000
ent dust trails, the author compares their pre-
dicted peak rates and Universal Times of ar-
4,000 3,700
rival with those actually determined, after
the fact, from observations collected by the
Predictions:
3,000 Pundits Track Records Asher/McNaught International Meteor Organization. (In two
Leonids in 1999 and 2000 Brown/Cooke cases where a zero rate was predicted, the
Lyytinen / Van Flandern time refers to Earths least separation from
Zenithal hourly rate (ZHR)

2,000
1,500 Actually observed that dust trail.)

Below: Predictions for 2001 in a nutshell. The

1,000
700 700 curves plotted here show the combined ef-
500 500 480 fect of all dust trails that the teams consid-
500 ered in 2001. While they agree closely as to
290
300 220 the time when Earth will encounter various
100
130
100 100 trails, they differ considerably as to zenithal
100 hourly rate. (It is important to note that the
Asher and Lyytinen teams predicted only
0 0 peak ZHRs at specific times; the curves con-
0
2:02
2:08
2:10
2:20

7:50
7:50
7:53
8:07

3:24
3:40
3:44
3:44

7:12
7:50
7:51
7:55
necting their peaks were derived by William
1999 Nov 18 2000 Nov 17 2000 Nov 18 2000 Nov 18 Cooke using the Brown model.)
1899 trail 1932 trail 1733 trail 1866 trail

Interestingly, this same trail probably 16,000

gave rise to a brief Leonid storm in 1869. 15,000

On the morning of November 14th, a 14,000

Dr. C. Meldrum and six other observers 13,000
at Port Louis Observatory and elsewhere 12,000
on the island of Mauritius (Indian 1866 trail
11,000 (primarily)
Ocean) fortuitously glimpsed a heavy 1699
Leonid shower as Earth swept through 10,000
trail
the 1766 trails outskirts. Morning twi- 9,000
light was well advanced, but these ob-
servers seem to have briefly witnessed 8,000

meteors at a rate equivalent to one or Leonid Meteor Shower

7,000
two thousand per hour. Forecasts for 2001
If the 2001 version of this shower 6,000
Zenithal hourly rate (ZHR)

peaks at 10:01 UT, much of the United Asher/McNaught

5,000 Brown/Cooke
States and Canada will see it before dawn Lyytinen / Van Flandern
in a dark sky. Should it arrive a half hour
later, as Lyytinens model suggests, morn- 4,000
ing twilight will be an increasing hin-
drance for those stationed along the At- 3,000
lantic Seaboard. In any case, the excellent 1766
convergence of the two models argues trail
that observers in North America and 2,000
Central America have a chance, weather
1799 trail 1633, 1666,
permitting, to see more meteors that
1699, and
Sunday morning than on any previous 1866 trails
SOURCE: WILLIAM COOKE

1,000
occasion in their lives.
But its hardly a sure bet. Brown and
Cooke, whose forecasts for 2001 original- 500
ly fell closely in line with those of Asher
and Lyytinen, drastically revised them in
late July of this year after adjusting their
100
model for Leonid rates observed (albeit
under bright moonlight) in 2000. In
their view, the combined effect of the 0
1766 particles and others from 1799 and 6h 8h 10h 12h 14h 16h 18h 20h 22h 24h
1833 will produce a broad, but shallow, Universal Time on November 18, 2001

112 November 2001 Sky & Telescope 2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
peak near 13h UT instead. They now an-
ticipate, for this early stage of the 2001
Leonid display, a ZHR no greater than
about 1,300.
18h UT (the 1699 and 1866 trails). The
Asher and Lyytinen models are again in
close agreement that another round of
heavy Leonid activity will occur between
roughly 17:20 and 18:20 UT. Both, in
fact, strongly hint at the near-conver-
gence of two dust trails those from
1699 and 1866.
Ashers model forecasts the peak of
the 1699 trail at 17:31 UT, while Lyytinen
calls for it to arrive near 18:07. Some
minutes later, between 18:19 and 18:24
UT, the peak of the 1866 trail is sched-
uled to occur. If this scenario plays out,
meteor activity from the two trails will
augment each other (because theyll
occur almost simultaneously and inde-
pendently), making for a potentially stu-
pendous meteor storm.
Asher and McNaught call for the first
of these trails to produce a ZHR near
9,000, and for the second to reach per-
haps 15,000. But this team chooses not
to quote a combined ZHR because the
peaks, in its calculations, are separated
by 48 minutes in arrival time.
Lyytinen and Van Flandern, in fact, Advertisement
have combined the activity from 1699
and 1866 as well as ejecta from two
smaller trails (1633 and 1666) to achieve
an absolute maximum ZHR of approxi-
mately 8,500 near 18:15 UT.
Cooke and Brown, for their part, agree
fully that the same four trails will be in-
volved. But they place this second peaks
arrival closer to 17h, and the ZHR from
their model is a mere 800. (Even so, in
Cookes assessment of the 2001 Leonid
shower as a whole, the chance that an or-
biting satellite will be struck and dam-
aged by a meteoroid is perhaps five times
greater than it was during the 1999
Leonid storm.)
The favored areas of visibility for this
second round of events would be the far-
western Pacific Ocean, eastern Asia, and
western and central Australia. Note: All
these regions lie to the west of the Inter-
national Date Line, so any potential
storm will occur there during the pre-
dawn hours of Monday, November 19th
(local date).

Decisions, Decisions!
Unfortunately, Europe, Africa, and west-
ern Asia will be in daylight when Earth
meets the 1766 and 1799 dust trails. And

2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Sky & Telescope November 2001 113
celestial calendar
Hemisphere Facing Moonlight Hemisphere Facing Moonlight
First Leonid Peak Second Peak
in 2001 (18:19 UT on
(10:01 UT on Nov. 18)
Nov. 18)

ght
li
Night

Twi
Night Day
80 80

Day
60 60
t
igh

SOURCE: ROBERT H. MCNAUGHT

40 40
il
Tw

30 30
20 20

10 10
Radiant altitude Radiant altitude

Left: This meteors-eye view shows how Earth will be oriented for the first expected peak of the Leonid shower in 2001. While the entire pre-
sented hemisphere experiences the shower, visibility is limited to the nighttime region to the left. If the peak comes later than the 10:01 UT used
for this map, morning twilight will become a problem along the U.S. East Coast. Right: A similar view of Earth during the second expected peak.
The day-night boundary passes from just east of Tasmania, north through the Pacific Ocean to Alaska, northern Canada, and Greenland.

while it will be after sunset when the
1699 and 1866 trails arrive, the Leonid
radiant will be far below the horizon
then and the shower masked from view.
For amateur and professional observers
who face the gloomy prospect of being
completely shut out from witnessing an-
other epic Leonid shower and yet are
leery of traveling long distances on the
strength of uncertain storm prospects,
David Asher offers a sanguine opinion. I
feel confident, if not certain, that a meteor
storm will be generated by the 1866 trail.
So if I were in Europe, I would have no
hesitation in going to some east-Asian
longitude to observe it, he says.
A more difficult decision would be
faced if I lived in North America. Would I
stay at home and probably experience a
great display, or would I travel so as to get
the one Im certain of ? Im not sure. . . .

Lovatos camera easily

caught another fireball as it
passed behind a thin layer
of clouds during the 1998
Leonid shower. This is a 15-
minute exposure on Fuji 800
film, and like the photo-
graph on page 111 it was
taken with a 16-mm wide-
angle lens at f/2.8.

114 November 2001 Sky & Telescope 2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
2002: The Grand Finale
As best as we can now tell, the year 2002
should bring two final opportunities to see
a storm of Leonid meteors. The penulti-
mate event is tied to yet another encounter
with the 1766 dust trail on November 19,
2002, near 4h UT. Western parts of Africa
and Europe will have the Leonid radiant
high toward the south-southeast just be-
fore dawn breaks. Meanwhile, Leo will be
rising in the east for northeastern North
America. Depending on which model
youre consulting, the ZHR could range
anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000.
Just six hours later, around 10:40 UT,
Earth will cut almost centrally through
the 1866 dust trail and possibly experi-
ence a storm with ZHRs of 10,000 to
30,000! This will be solely a North Amer-
ican spectacle; most locations in the U.S.
and Canada will have the Leonid radiant
positioned high in their predawn sky.
(Those on the East Coast, however, will
have to cope with the advance of morn-
ing twilight.)
The drawback for all observers next
year and a huge one will be the
Moon. This natural light polluter will be
less than one day from its full phase,
making next years observing conditions
practically the worst imaginable! Nor- Advertisement
mally the full Moon keeps meteor ob-
servers soundly in bed, but with the
prospects of Leonid activity once again
attaining storm levels next year, many of
us will no doubt be out in force again,
braving the mid-November chill.

Acknowledgments
It has been said that in 1953, after win-
ning a fifth consecutive World Series,
New York Yankees manager Casey Sten-
gel quipped, I couldnt have done it
without my players. So too, I couldnt
have written this, my fifth Leonid prog-
nostication for Sky & Telescope, without
the cooperation of such meteor scientists
as David Asher, Peter Brown, Bill Cooke,
Esko Lyytinen, Rob McNaught, and Tom
Van Flandern. They provided helpful
comments and even preprints of soon-
to-be published Leonid papers. Skilled
meteor observers Gary Kronk and John
Bortle helped with specific queries. The
assistance of them all is gratefully ac-
knowledged!

Joe Rao regularly faces forecasting dilemmas

of a different sort as an on-camera meteorolo-
gist for Cablevision/News 12 in Westchester
County, New York.

2001 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Sky & Telescope November 2001 115