Leonid Report

Location: Latitude approx. 16.9 degree north, Longitude approx. 101.2 degree
east;or 7 hours ahead of UT time, about 500 kilometers north-eastern from
Bangkok City, at Phu-hin-rong-kla mountain (about 1050m above sea levels).
This place used to be Communist station.

Country: Thailand.

My friends and I, in total 6 witness this Leonid shower with pleasure, although it's a bit (only a bit) disappointed because we hope to see 'shower'.

Followings are what we saw (6 of us help counting):

Local Date and time: 17 Nov.

00:30-01:30? 28 meteors. Leonid open the show by two big (very big!) fireball across from east to west horizon. Very beautiful!

01:31-02:30am? 98 meteors.
02:31-03:30am? 171 meteors.

03:31-04:30am 280 meteors.

04:31-05:30am 370 meteors.

The sky is very clear, weather is still, even Sirius hardly twinkles!. I could rate it 9 because my Intes MK67 can boost up power to 360X at Jupiter and Saturn without image deterioration!.

At least 50 big fireballs were seen!. Many leave their smoke trails for at least half a minute. Unfortunately, the sky was at dawn when the Leonid seems to multiply its frequency. I think India, Burma, or Europe might have had better opportunity to see the real peak time!. (Later news confirm that Europe can see 2,000 meteors per hour).

Local Date and Time: 18 Nov.

This morning was supposed to be the peak period for Leonid, according to the astronomer prediction. However, we found that the night before was much more impressive and more meteors:

01:00-02:00am 81 meteors
02:01-03:00am 88 meteors
03:01-04:00am 120 meteors.

There are 5 beautiful fireballs at early period, then only small ones appeared from time to time. We could not fully count the meteors after 4:00am because of cloudy sky. The sky was not that clear when compared with the day before. It's quite disappointing for most Thai people who expected to see the skyshow only on this day.

However, the Nov.17th was the greatest night for us because it was so beautiful and we hope to come to this place again next year.

We took at least 4 rolls of film on the above two nights. Hope to post them soon.

Stay Tune!. (see beautiful Leonid images)

Chotechai Piyavongsiri and Sky Observers Group - Thailand ? visit no.: