Leonid Meteor Storm

The story of our 2001 Leonids expedition to Japan is a long one, with lots of photos -- you will find links after the pictures.

The meteor storm was fantastic. It was high from midnight to twilight, and in the hour around 3am was doing around one bright meteor per second (105 in 2 minutes), with the radiant at about 50 degrees for a ZHR in the 4,500 range. We had expected a storm with many dim meteors, this storm seemed to be mostly bright ones -- or the swarm of bright ones distracted us from the dim ones that probably were there. As such, it's hard to say what a real ZHR should have been.

I shot on two cameras, one a 35mm film camera with ISO 800 and 1600 film, and the D30 digital camera, probably the only digital able to do decent night photography.

My shots were astounding, but the developing was not. In eagerness, and to avoid bringing high speed film through the X-rays, I had a local shop in Tokyo develop the rolls. This is not the third world, after all, but the home of the Fuji films I was developing. Unfortunately they really screwed up the B&W film and left the colour film dim and unfortunately heavily scratched.

When you photograph a regular shower, you will shoot all night and be lucky to get one or two solo meteors. For this storm, every single frame got multiple meteors. Most got more than 4, and a series near the peak all had more than 10 meteors per frame! Only the brightest meteors will show up on film, which makes this even more impressive. On two of the prints, made before the negatives were scratched, you can see over 20 meteors. We're working on getting better scans to show this out.

The first roll was shot with a 17mm f/2.8 lens on Fuji NHG II 800 speed film. Mostly 3 minute exposures, with some 5 minute exposures at the end. A few more frames, none of which were usable, were shot on 1600 NEOPAN film. Most shots were near the radiant, a few to the north and a few to the south with Orion.

The D30 digital camera shot 10 second exposures at 800 and then later 400 ISO. It takes about 22 seconds to do this since it then shoots a dark frame of 10 seconds to eliminate noise, but there is still tons of noise at these long speeds and exposures on any non-astronomical digital camera. I shot at first with a 50mm f/1.8 lens -- which as the field of view of an 80mm lens on a 35mm film camera. This is a tiny field of view, and in a normal meteor storm would get nothing. Amazingly, the digital captured several solo meteors, and one triple meteor. Later I put the 17mm lens on the digital (equivalent to a 27mm lens on 35mm) and caught some double meteors.

Note that some of these may be dark on some screens, and to see all the meteors you may need to adjust your gamma up or turn up brightness.

Lost in Japan Index

We had spent the first few days constantly tracking weather reports to see what location would be clear. We had chosen Japan because other than Guam, it would have the radiant highest in the sky for the biggest storm. And Asia was predicted to have twice the storm of the USA. Japan also has good logistics -- you can take the Shinkansen high speed train up and down the length of the country in just 7 hours. It also has lots and lots of light pollution, and a higher risk of clouds than China or Australia.

However, Australia would have only half the meteor rate that we would see in Japan, and while China would have only slightly less, it wasn't practical to arrange an expedition there on short notice. Airfares to Japan were around $400. Plus it is a very interesting place to visit.

Fortunately, as the day neared, much of Japan looked clear. Amazingly there were 4 different weather sources, all disagreeing until the final day. On that day we decided to go to the rugged coast the Mie Prefecture, which is on the Kansai (Kinki) peninsuala, south of Nagoya and Kyoto. We booked a room at a resort hotel where nobody spoke any English, but we had our phrasebooks and car. We ended up in a tiny fishing village called Kii-Nagashima.

The hotel had dark skies (which were cloudless) but had bright streetlights in a deserted construction zone which would be on all night. So we explored the coastal road and found a windy section of the road that had been closed after the bypass was built. We went down it a short distance (further it was overgrown) and found a spot with a nice clear eastern view, blocked a bit behind us to the west. But it was possible to lie down and fill your field with nothing but stars in a dark sky, limiting magnitude about 6.

We returned to the hotel to get cushions, blankets and supplies, and left there around local midnight. The show had already strated with frequent long earth grazers. Quite spectacular. We drove to the site and set up for a fabulous night.

We had taken 6 hours to get to the hotel, not the 2.5 the Avis agent estimated (Always double estimates in Japan), so things were a bit rushed. As such I didn't focus the digital camera properly at first, since it's hard to do when it's very dark and there is no moon. We managed.

The count was very high all night, and as reported, most of the meteors were bright. Later we talked to people who had seen a great show in the middle of Tokyo -- about as light polluted as you can get. Not the 1/second show but still worth staying up for.

This bodes well for next year, if the meteors are as bright there will still be a great show with the full moon. We'll be out.