November 20, 2002

By DOUANE D. JAMES
Special to The Sun

 

MICHAEL C. WEIMAR/The Gainesville Sun Students from the Buchholz High School Astronomy Club and faculty adviser Ken Brandt endure temperatures near 35 degrees to witness the Leonid meteor shower early Tuesday morning. The red streak at right is caused by Brandt's flashlight

Buchholz High School ninth-grader Sam Richardson was up and about before 5 a.m. Tuesday, gazing to see "the shooting stars" light up the dark morning sky.

"It was a spectacular sight of green and light pink meteors," Sam said of his first experience viewing a meteor shower, this time with his family from the back of his father's pickup at Santa Fe Community College's northwest campus. "I think it was better than advertised."

Astronomers said stargazers will have to wait until about 2098 before conditions are right to see the Leonid meteor shower light up the night's sky like it did Tuesday. The meteor shower occurs each November as the Earth passes through dusty comet debris.

Kim Hampton of Gainesville was one of many who went to see the Leonid shower at Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park, which was packed with cars parked off U.S. 441 for much of the peak time to see the meteors, from about 4 to 6 a.m.

"It was kind of like a fireworks show," said Hampton, who took her four children. "You'd hear people go, 'Ooooh,' and you'd look to see where they were looking."

About 50 people, mostly University of Florida students, endured sub-40 degree temperatures to gather outside the Rosemary Hill Observatory near Bronson to lie on mattresses and in sleeping bags to witness the light show.

"You'd look up in the sky and you'd see brilliant streaks of light in different colors, different intensities, some faint, some strong," astrophysics graduate student Bruno Ferreira said. "It was like being in the cinema and commenting on everything that happened."

He said he estimated seeing about 20 meteors a minute from 4:30 to 5:30 a.m. The light from a near full moon washed out many of the fainter ones, he said.

Even with the full moon, the celestial display of "whitish yellow and bluish green" streaks and a "big green fireball" was worth staying up all night to see, said BHS ninth-grader Savannah Powell, who watched the showers from her driveway with her father.

"I'm not one to get up early, (but) this was the chance of a lifetime," Savannah said.

Francisco Reyes, associate scientist in UF's department of astronomy, said the moon's glare prevented this year's meteor shower from being as prominent as last year.

"Last year was more spectacular in terms of number of meteors and brightness," said Reyes, who viewed it from UF's radio observatory in Dixie County.

During last year's Leonid meteor shower, the moon did not pose a problem and hundreds of meteors an hour were visible in the clear, dark skies.

The Leonid shower takes it name from the constellation Leo because the meteors appear to flow from that part of the sky.

The meteor shower occurs when the Earth passes through the trail of dust left by comet Tempel-Tuttle, which sweeps around the sun every 33 years. The dust grains, traveling at 158,000 mph, glow and vaporize as friction heats them up in the upper atmosphere, producing streaks of light.

Ken Brandt, Earth and space science teacher at BHS, described the meteor shower as the rare event that sparks the interest of just about all of his students.

"You should have heard the buzz in the classroom (on Tuesday)," he said, adding that some students even brought in CDs with digital photographs they took of the shower.

Brandt said he will teach students to use the data some collected from their homes to make the point that light pollution, or the street and city lights in urban and suburban areas, hampers the visibility of showers when compared to rural areas.

Brandt was quick to add, however, that he advised students to be aware of the the simple beauty of the Leonid shower.

"Meteors force you to contemplate the wonder of it all," he said. "The feeling, the experience, is just as important as the science, the gathering of data."