[LargeFormat] Leonid Meteor Shower

[Clive Warren]

How many of you will be set up to take photos of the Leonid Meteor shower?

Stayed up last night but the whole area of SW England was shrouded by 
cloud throughout the night. Still overcast today so am not holding up 
much hope for tomorrow before dawn.....

There are fairly reliable predictions that meteor shower at its peak 
may produce thousands of meteors per hour. The Royal Observatory in 
Greenwich, England has a useful page on the showers:

http://www.rog.nmm.ac.uk/leaflets/solar_system/leonids/2001/index.html

NASA also has a section of its web site devoted to the Leonids - a 
result of the close path of the Temple-Tuttle comet to Earth. This 
will probably be more useful to you if you are based in the US.

The Earths orbit passes close to the comet's orbit each year in 
November and during this time the Earth collides with particles of 
cometary debris which follow the comet's orbit.

Predictions are for as many as 15000 meteors per hour this year! 
Some chaps recently came up with a way of predicting the meteor 
showers fairly accurately so it WILL be worth popping your head out 
of the window if nothing else.....

Photos welcome for the f32 web site :-)

Cheers,
         Clive