|
It was cloudy on the night of November 17th, 1998. Of course it was! That was the night that the Leonid meteor shower was supposed to dazzle us with fireballs. Around midnight, Jim Holloway called me and said it was starting to clear off about down by Winterset. By the time I got down there, the meteors were in full swing with several per minute streaking across the sky. Bright fireballs were exploding into view quite frequently and as they did, the area around us would light up and I could see the ground across the South River valley, a mile away. Suddenly, a huge fireball came from the east and blinded us as it disintegrated right overhead. The resulting smoke train hung above us for over ten minutes. The image on the left shows the smoke train right after the fireball exploded. The center frame was a few minutes later as another meteor streaked through it. The image on the right, shows the wispy remains of the smoke train ten minutes after the fireball. The center image was featured November 27th, 1998 on NASA's "Astronomy Picture Of The Day. Sky & Space magazine, an Australian publication, also ran an article about our experiences that night.
|
