I missed the Leonids meteor shower this year (why am I blogging about an astronomical event I missed, yet again?). I just felt less motivated to stay up on the wee morning of 19th Nov, knowing that the shower this year would never match up to what I saw back in Nov 2001. Besides, nobody on the local astronomy forum announced any plans of observing that morning (but someone did observe on the morning of the 18th). Not being someone who initiates events, and not wanting to fire up expectations, I stayed in bed.
There were five of us that frostly November night in 2001. We met at the observatory on campus the evening before, did some observation, and headed out to the plantations shortly after midnight. The increase in meteor count was noticeable even before midnight - an encouraging prelude to the celestial spectacle that was to unfold in a few hours' time.
Initially I spent most of my time with J identifying constellations I couldn't normally see from the light-polluted on-campus sky. A was preparing his camera for timed-exposure. The milky way wasn't visible, but the sky was then the best I'd seen. I remember that the usually inconspicuous constellation of Cancer was easily visible.
Being FOB and having spent most of my life in the tropics, I wasn't well-prepared for the cold. I dressed as I would during the daytime --- I wore a fur coat, rather airy wool gloves and socks, jeans, and sneakers --- not expecting that night time temperatures could be very different from that in the day. With the wind chill, it didn't take very long before the shivering started. A was kind enough to lend me the extra shirt he brought along, which I wrapped around my head. The end of my limbs, especially my toes, went numb eventually. I tried to generate extra body heat by jogging around rather vigorously but it didn't help much. I became worried that I'd be paying my first visit to the medical facility in the town and lose my toes to frostbite... fortunately that didn't happen. I don't know how I could have got by those freezing pre-dawn hours if not for the exceptionally clear night sky and the meteors. The symptoms are like pain --- they become bearable if you don't pay attention. In retrospect, I don't think I'd regret losing my toe for the meteor shower.
By about 4am, with Leo high in the east, it was obvious where most of the meteors came from. Each of us would alert the rest whenever we caught a bright one the others didn't see. Later, meteors became so abundant (or we were just plain tired and frozen) that we didn't bother with these exclaimations. We did a rather unscientific meteor count during that hour. Four of us faced the four compass directions and took count for a minute timed by the time signals from the shortwave radio I brought along. We added up numbers and it came to 70 meteors per minute (note: this number includes overlap counts)! While the meteors in a shower appear at smaller intensities compared to those in a firework display, meteors in a shower bring surprise, and a serene sense of awe with nature. Perhaps this is the reason I was never deeply impressed nor inspired by orchestrated firework displays.
The sky started to brighten not long after the predicted shower maxima. Having seen more meteors in a night than we had all our lives before that faithful night in November, we called it quits and headed home, with the shower showing no signs of abatement in the growing dawn.
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