Velika meteorska nevihta leta 1966

Po 65 letih mirovanja so leta 1966 Leonidi nad severno Ameriko izbruhnili v največjo meteorsko nevihto v zabeleženi zgodovini. Opazovalci iz zahodnih ZDA so poročali o kar 150 000 Leonidih na uro, oz. 40-50 Leonidih na sekundo. Ta spektakel pa je videlo zelo malo ljudi. Leonidi so namreč razočarali v letih 1899 in 1932, ko so pričakovali meteorski dež, tako da je bilo leta 1966 zanimanje za Leonide majhno. Prav tako tedaj ni bilo tako natančnih napovedi za meteorske roje, kot jih imamo danes, tako da je opazovalce sam meteorski deč, še posebej pa njegova izjemna moč povsem presenetil. Poleg tega so veliki deli Kalifornije, Floride in Oregona, kjer je bilo največje število meteorskih opazovalcev, zjutraj 18. novembra 1966 pod meglo. Spodaj je zbranih nekaj poročil opazovalcev, ki so kljub vsemu videli ta nebesni spektakel...

Norman McLeod III
Tallahassee, Florida
Late evening of 1966 Nov 16 I went downstairs in the dormitory at Florida State. Someone then informed me that a group of students had gotten wind of a big meteor shower coming and that they were already up on the sun deck observing. This being around 11 PM, I knew they were much too early as the radiant was just below the horizon in the ENE. So I went to the sun deck myself to witness the eager group waiting for action. I told them it was too early and to wait until after 2 AM. But I doubt if anyone lasted long enough to see anything ; it was nap time for me until 2 o'clock. (Adding this in 1999 : location Tallahassee, Florida, latitude 30N, longitude 84W.)
...my Leonid rate reached 3/minute, which was right about 4:30 AM EST, or 1:30 AM PST where Bob [Lunsford] was. My rate of 6/minute didn't start until 5 AM. Magnitude-only recording began at 5:03 AM, then without times after 5:19 AM. In the period 5:19 to 6:00 I recorded 361 meteors, finishing at about 30/minute as dawn and fog combined to end the show. It was a very steady rain of meteors, one each two seconds, with none simultaneous and no bunching seen. During that 40 minutes I saw two -5's and four -4's ; these acted like punctuation marks within the display. The following evening the local newspaper had a short article on the front page headlined "Meteor Shower Fizzles." It was the usual confirmation that the public needs a much stronger or brighter event than an astronomer in order to be impressed. The peak came after sunrise ; it just couldn't be observed. It was too foggy for the next few hours to try for daylight Leonids, plus I was pooped. I was just thankful the fog held off until dawn. Soon after that I thought about how sad it would be for new people to get interested in meteors during 1967. I was born in 1946 and began meteors in 1960, so I was fortunate to have a few years experience in time for the 1966 Leonids.

Dennis Milon
Kitt Peak (Observatory), Arizona
From 1h30m am MST (Mountain Standard Time, UT-7h) to 2h30m we made meteor counts and magnitude estimates. Still, the rate of about 33 Leonids per hour gave no indication of the spectacle to come...
...Our second hour of observing began at 2h50m. The observing was getting more exciting as the rate climbed and the number of bright meteors increased. At the end of the hour, at 3h50m, 192 Leonids had been recorded by a single observer. Up to 30 of these were of negative magnitudes.
It was getting impossible to write down magnitude estimates as the meteors came faster and faster. We started making counts per minute. The count was about 30 per minute at 4h10m. The sky literally began to rain shooting stars. Everywhere we turned we saw them.
By 4h30m there were several hundreds per minute. The fantastic rate of about 40 per second was reached at 4h54m. A 43 second exposure of the Big Dipper showed 43 Leonids. Looking directly at the radiant gave the effect of depth of the Earth moving through space. Point meteors marked the radiant. The rate was over 1000 per minute for 40 minutes from 4h35m to 5h15m. The peak of perhaps 2400 per minute was centered at 4h55m. Some said it was like a dream, an amateur astronomer's dream come true!

James W. Young,
Tabletop Mountain (Observatory), California
The 1966 Leonid Meteor Shower was observed ... on the morning of November 17 starting at 2:30 AM through heavy clouds. By 3:30 AM, the clouds had completely cleared while the intensity of the shower continued to grow.
Around 4:45 AM the shower seemed to peak with the sky filled with meteor trails everywhere! The estimated peak of 50/second lasted for about 10 minutes. During the event, as observed by the five members present, we photographed over 1000 meteor trails, including a dozen fireballs, the brightest one being -12 magnitude! A total of 22 fireballs were seen by the group. During the peak, everyone felt like we needed hard-hats, as the intensity was so great when we blinked our eyes open (instead of closed), the sky was full of streaks everywhere!
Most of the lower areas in southern California were fogged in at the time, and only a few reports from local truckers were reported along with ours in California.

Don Pearson,
Kitt Peak (Observatory), Arizona
Thirteen of us, mostly students, drove to observe and record the Leonids atop Kitt Peak on the night of Nov. 16-17, 1966. We formed a circle of chairs and began to study our assigned areas of the sky for meteors. It started off slowly, about 30/hour. After 3 hours it picked up dramatically, and we observed a peak of about 40/second that lasted for 10 to 20 minutes. This was 24,000 in a ten minute period, a rate of 144,000/hour. We stood in awe as the sky seemed filled with meteors. With this number of meteors falling simultaneously, and all from the same radiant, the shortening of their paths near the radiant was quite obvious. I was fortunate to have a 35 mm camera and tripod with me, and had several pictures of the shower printed on the cover of Sky and Telescope shortly after. I doubt I'll ever witness anything in the sky as spectacular as the Leonids of 1966.

Dave Seibert,
Pine Forrest, Mississippi
Several of the boys, the principal and I, stayed on the roof of the Sanitarium/Nursing Home during the display. At it's height, three of us divided the sky into thirds, faced different directions and counted for one hour. Our individual counts totalled 1,200 per hour.
Finally, well after daylight, I went to the cafeteria for breakfast, but paused at the top of the hill to see just ONE more streaker. Sure enough, a large meteor shot across the sky, leaving a BRIGHT GREEN trail for several seconds. That was the outstanding thing about what we watched, that night: the glowing trails that stayed behind after many of the fireballs extinguished.

Ed Cunnius,
north Texas
My mom woke me up that morning and told me to put on a coat and come outside. I don't know the exact time. We normally had to get up at six o'clock, and it was well before then--probably around five. I couldn't imagine what was going on, but it had to be something pretty exciting if I could wear my pajamas outside. As I ran out of the house, I remember my dad standing in the yard, quietly staring at the sky. I could see the reason even before I was completely out the doorNthe sky was covered with meteors, all seeming to rain straight down. My dad explained that this was a "meteor shower" and that my grandfather had called to wake us up so we could see it. Facing east, I looked up and into the "center" of the storm where the meteors were so fast and constant it looked as if the earth were rushing through the stars. As it began to get lighter and the sky turned from black to dark blue; a gigantic fireball fell in the west leaving a visible smoke trail. It was bright enough to overpower the predawn sky-glow, turning the whole sky a pale blue-green. We watched until the sun came up. I don't remember the rates tapering off much, just that the very faint meteors became harder and harder to see. All morning faint, short-tailed meteors had provided a kind of scratchy background to the brighter rain of material. From that night on, anytime the weatherman announced a meteor shower was on the way, I would fully expect another spectacle like the Leonids. I was jaded at the age of six by the storm of the century.