Some of you will have read my previous article, but this is to clarify for those new to stargazing or sky watching, that for the Leonid meteor shower on 17th November 2009…..YOU WON’T NEED A TELESCOPE TO ENJOY IT !!
It’s that time of year again for the Leonid meteor shower due to peak on the 17th of November. But many are predicting that this year will see up to 500 meteors per hour in this astonishing display as the Earth passes through the debris left by the comet Tempel-Tuttle.
No scientific jargon here, and definitely no specific facts and figures to bore you. Just good old fashioned basics that will give the interested or the learner a slightly more than vague understanding of the brightest object in our night sky, and maybe a thirst to find out more.
A tiny but actually important discovery was made on the night of March 24, 1993. That average night, a photo of the stars was taken by the 0.4 meter telescope on Palomar Mountain in California. Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy studied that photo of the stars and found an unknown comet. That comet caused a huge impact.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could use a large telescope? The VLT UT1 Antu telescope at the European Southern Observatory with a clear aperture of eight meters built in 1998 with an M1 F# of 1.75 made of Zero dur weighing in at 430 metric tons (you can see it at http://www.eso.org/) would give you some great viewing nights.
Eight hundred years ago, the number of visible stars would have been about 6000 total. So through most of history, the real number of stars could not have been guessed.
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