11/15/2003: Leonids from space

The Leonid meteor shower has been a regular topic of conversation here. So someone (Belet? Spode?) sent along this interesting one of the Leonids - from space!

From the full story, this shot is a composite image from 1997's version of the shower.

Hey, that's what I see when I stand up too fast.
Cool picture, UT. Seeing things like meteors, lightning, hurricanes and such from space is a great way to put it all in perspective.

Are you sure? With all those projectiles flying around this picture might have been taken in South Philly on a Saturday night.

If I was on the spacecraft that took these I would be saying get the hell outtahere!

I think I sent that one awhile back. I was really bummed out about having missed the *really* big Leonids in 2001. The peak didn't occur when it was advantageous to view it from Missouri, unfortunately. I spent about three hours outside last year at an obscene hour, though, and actually saw what was the closest to a meteor 'shower' that I've ever seen, when, during the peak time, my wife and I saw about a three minute flurry of meteors that probably hit a rate of about 60-70 per minute. Pretty cool, but a far cry from the thousands per minute seen in 1966 and 2001.

so... uhh... how the hell do the space station/space shuttle/5000 satellites up there miss being pulverized during one of these storms?

Because the vast majority of those meteoroids are the size of a grain of sand.

Yeah, but going how fast?

I don't have access to the data right now (and am too lazy to look it up), but at any reasonable speed, even a grain of sand can cause significant damage...