Moon Halo, Leonid Night, 2002

There was a prominent moon halo on night of November 18th, the night of the predicted Leonid meteor storm. This picture was taken as a jet condensation trail crossed through the halo. Taken with a 17mm (ultra-wide angle) lens. You can see the roof of my house on the right, and the roof of our garage on the left. Four second exposure at f5.6 on Kodak E-200 slide film. I could have used more exposure!

While hazy clouds did severely limit the number of meteors I could see, they did make for a nice lunar display. I counted 18 Leonids from 4:15 a.m. until 5:15 a.m. central. Just to show you what a difference the weather and observing site can make, a HAS member who traveled up to Llano (N. of Austin, TX) reported that his group saw over 1000 meteors during the same time period. This was from a place at about 1400 ft elevation, very clear skies with no city light pollution, and a good horizon.

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