Leonids campaign 2001 of ESA/SSD to Australia

Introduction

Well, we saw it! We witnessed a very nice Leonid display in the night 18/19 Nov 2001 from two locations close to Broome, Western Australia. We did not go to the Wolfe Creek Crater, as originally planned - it had rainfall and thunderstorms. An illustration of this can be seen on this IR weather image from the evening of the 18 Nov 2001.

In the following, we give an overview over our campaign as it really happened and repeat our science goals.We left all the links as in the old page. Also check out our Leonids 2001 gallery for nice pictures. Our daily reports can be accessed via this page.

Overview over our campaign

This time we went to Australia. While Mongolia and China were - in our opinion - slightly more attractive when it comes to the best observing conditions for the predicted Leonid peaks themselves, our decision was driven by the fact that we can combine our meteor campaign with a test campaign for a new prototype of a Mutual Impedance (MI) probe which is an interesting candidate for future planetary missions and is based on flight hardware developed for Cassini-Huygens and Rosetta. We have operated our intensified video cameras both in white light and with an objective grating. Due to political quarrels, our planned participation in the Leonid MAC airplane campaign did not materialize after all.

Our science goals (for the meteor campaign) were:

Primary:

Secondary goals:

The team

The following people participated in our campaign:

Detlef Koschny (video cameras, overall coordination)
Joe Zender (still camera, PR)
André Knöfel, IMO (video cameras)
Roland Trautner (E-field measurements)
Grant Hobson (photographer)
Fiona Adolf (reporter)
Olivier Witasse (atmospheric physics, support at ESTEC)

In addition, the following people will be active during the Leonids:

Hakan Svedhem (impacts)
Jean-Pierre Lebreton (forward-scatter radio observations)
Gerhard Schwehm (comet science, PR)
Nicolas Biver (microwave observations of the Earth's atmosphere)

Our trip

Initially, we planned to go to Wolfe Creek Crater. Our old plan is kept here for historical reasons. Here is what we really did:

(to come).

Olivier Witasse was in contact with us once per day via satellite phone. He put our daily reports on the web in real time. They can be accessed here.

Links

Weather

Rental cars

Here, I immediately link to the 4WD cars. Most companies offer only one type anyway. This is what we had:

Flights

Maps

  • The Earth as seen from the radiant for the predicted peak at 2001 Nov 18, 17h31m UT (predicted rate is 15000): 2001_map_b. This map was prepared my Rob McNaught, see his ASA page.
  • The Earth as seen from the radiant for the predicted peak at 2001 Nov 18, 18h19m UT (predicted rate is 15000): 2001_map_c. This map was prepared my Rob McNaught, see his ASA page.
  • Overview map of Australia, south of Broome.
  • Overview map of Australia, west of Broome.
  • Detailed map of Wolf Creek crater as shown on the right (59k jpg)
  • Detailed map of complete North-West Australia (426k jpg!)

Other things

Meteor links


To "Meteor observations at ESA/SSD"

This page prepared by Detlef Koschny on 26 Feb 2001, last update 29 Nov 2001.