Good advice. With a peak predicted for about 3 am our time, I was even thinking about Little Mountain at about 2-ish. My winter meteor observing outerwear consists of insulated overalls plus parka, navy watch cap plus hood if needed, snowmobile sox, electric sox if needed. I can last for most of the night dressed like this. If you have a manual transmission, park facing downhill if you think your car battery is marginal. On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 10:59 AM, daniel turner <outwest112@yahoo.com>wrote:
For tonights peak of the Leonid meteor shower the good news is that the weather will be clear and the moon is out of the night time sky.
The bad news is the weather. Last night at the Pony Express marker, which is close to "pit n pole", the temperature dropped to zero and the humidity spiked up to 90 percent. So anything optical like a telescope, or camera lense will suffer from frost and be useless without vigorous countermeasures. There is no measurable inversion so climbing up a ridge line will not get you out of these frost conditions.
I would suggest anyone going out to try leave the optics home and plan on a survival strategy like two cars and a tow strap. As well as your warmest winter clothing.
I plan to go to Little Mountain after midnight but don't plan to say long enough to get frostbite.
Good Luck
DT
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