Hi Bob

 Di> All we got here in Sydney was rain,. cloud, more rain and more
 Di> cloud. And not necessarily in that order.

 Di> I would really have liked to see this, but I guess I will have
 Di> to wait another 33 years.

 BL>  How do you think *I* feel? That was my last chance! Bloody Hewey!

 BL>  I've only seen one meteor. When Halley's comet was due, I drove out

Small meteors are quite common. On a good clear Saturday night,
when our huge (6 or so) club has an observing night, it would be
very unusual if not one person pointed up somewhere and yelled out
"Meteor!!" just in time for everyone to turn around and miss it.

Big ones that leave visible trails are a lot less common, true. I
saw more of them on that one Leonid "fizzer" night than I'd ever
seen before. In my entire life.

 BL> to Coogee on the point, a park where you can look straight out to sea
 BL> and it's pitch black. There were hundreds of us all going crook
 BL> because Halleys was a dead loss and whoosh! A fantastic meteor shot
 BL> across the sky. I stayed there for hours and saw a few satellites, but
 BL> that was the only one... and Halley's sucks, too.

Another example of too much media hype. Halley was small and faint,
sure. But so is Queen Lizzie, and heaps of people still swoon when
she goes out in public, no matter how poor a view they get. I
certainly did. (over Halley, not Liz.) (And I have photos. Taken
with an ordinary camera with a 300mm lens.)


Historical trivia: the anomaly in Mercury's orbit that can be
explained today by Einstein's relativity was accurately measured by
1859. In that year, a French astronomer called Le Verrier explained
the anomaly by predicting the existence and orbit of an inner
planet named Vulcan. Transits of Vulcan across the Sun were
expected between 2 and 4 times per year. A "wild goose chase"
ensued, with a rash of false alarms caused by everything from
ephemeral sunspots through Leonid meteors to wild geese (literally
- birds crossing the sun and the moon in telescope views had been
identified as birds (quail, in one case) since 1839, but still made
false alarms.)

 Source: Sky&Telescope magazine Oct 1998, p112.


Cheers

--- PPoint 1.88