Did anybody see the Leonids Sunday Morning??

Stayed up until about 5.00am, saw about 6 bright ones and a few fainter. No outburst down here anyway.

I saw approx 2 meteors per minute. was out from 0430 till 0522 and saw a noticable increase in activity from 0442 until 0516 then a sudden stop. None brighter than mag+1 and some quite dim est 3.5. My sky was clear limiting vis mag +5.

DaveG

Hi,

From Rush, Co.Dublin some Preliminary Results:

Did counts totaling 30mins: 11 Leonids observed. A few quite bright (mag. 2) leaving very short-lived trains, very fast as well, white in colour.

Only about 20-25% of sky monitored. Clear sky (LM = mag 5).

Other distractions:
LPV T Cep at 6th mag.
7 Iris bright in Aries (see finder chart at www.irishastrosoc.org/obs.htm ).

John

Eugene Burke, myself and my daughter (Leanne) met at 4am at my house (10 miles outside Dungarvan - very dark skies apart from nearby farmers' lights!).

There was a small amount of haze at times but it kept lifting and coming back so it didn't really affect the viewing. We took the opportunity to have a good look at Saturn which was lovely.

As for the Leonids, we saw quite a lot of activity from about 4.20 through to 5.30am. About one per minute though many were quite faint - a couple of peaks of activity (4.50am and 5.10am). There was a double 'fireball' kinda thing at 5.55 but I don't know what the mag would have been - I saw it very clearly but Eugene had his back to it and said it lit the whole sky - worth getting up for on it's own.

My house must be under an international flight path though cos the amount of planes flying over was unbelievable - at times there were up to 5 planes crossing at the same time! Kinda spoiled it a bit, especially if you wanted to take photo's.

Bernie

Unfortuneately 90% of the traffic from the states to Europe passes over some part of Ireland between say 0400 and 0800 depending on where the jetstream lies. thats what u were seeing, I work in ATC Shannon and we work them as they go across. I've being trying for about 10 yrs now to get all planes to fly MOn to Fri 0930 to 530pm but nobodies taken me up on it yet

Dave Gradwell

They all seem to fly over the south coast.
At one morning (5am) last summer I counted 11 high (trans Atlantic) jets and over 20 older contrails heading east into Europe.
Its like a motorway up there sometimes!