Observing Notesfrom the Tuckahoe IrregularsThe message below was copied from "Spaceweather.com" today (Wednesday). LEONIDS RECAP: Despite a glaring full moon, sky watchers from Europe to California saw hundreds of Leonids Tuesday morning. An outburst over Europe at 0400 UT was followed, more or less as expected, by a second outburst over North America around 11:00 UT. The two flurries corresponded to encounters with two clouds of dusty comet debris. Monday, the Spaceweather predictions were for 2000-6000 per hour. Quite a difference in "thousands per hour" and a few hundred over several hours. Such is the nature of "prediction vs actual". As I watched the occasional bright fireball and the less bright ghostly meteors under frosty and full-moon lit skies from Tuckahoe, my doubts about the capability of the Leonid Meteor forecasters began to grow - exponentially! Are they a sadistic group who get their jollies by predicting a spectacular occurrence that may happen once in 100 years over a very small section of earth's surface? Do they get their jollies by enticing loyal stargazers to brave weather and lack of sleep all the while knowing their predictions have an extremely slim chance of being correct? The colder my feet the more I doubted their abilities; ie, Doubt = Cold Feet raised to the third power! Somewhere they were sitting in a warm room laughing at my Tuckahoe hopefuls and me. But, the night was a lot of fun. I estimate we had around 30 people. The temperature was approximately 35F at 8:00 PM and fell to 27F around 3:00 AM; the previous weeks of rain ensured a heavy frost and bone-chilling dampness. Some of us arrived shortly after dark and stayed the night. Some arrived as late as 3:00 am; those poor people missed the tremendous show of activity around 11:00 PM. There were twice as many meteors seen between 11 and 12 as between 10 and 11. The actual numbers were 2 and 1 respectively. After midnight the activity did pick up and there were some bright fireballs that would have been spectacular under darker conditions. And there were lots of meteors of very short duration that would have been very nice without the moon. I found the dimmest ghostly flickers of light very interesting; sometimes I asked myself if I really saw the light or imagined it. Our all-night coffee pot (mostly hot chocolate this time) and midnight hotdogs proved to be a necessity. We must make those a regular at our all-night events. Our Leonid watching was accompanied by some of Mother Nature's best sounds. In particular, the little foxes of Tuckahoe serenaded us with their extremely unnerving howls. If you have never heard these critters at night you may want to be sure you are in the company of someone who has because you will swear there is a murder being committed! And then there was the flock of swans that passed over us - I was under my tarp! Geese and what I believe are coyotes (probably feral dogs) chimed in occasionally. All told, we had a good time and I would certainly do it again. When is the next meteor shower scheduled? Don Surles |