Meteor shower
What blocked the view ?

NEW DELHI, Nov 18 (PTI) — Indian astronomers who are wondering why the much-hyped celestial display this morning turned out to be a dud say they are completely baffled.

Well-known astronomer Jayant Narlikar, who could count only two during the peak of the storm blames it partly on cloudiness and light pollution while Mr R. Subramaniam, Director of the Birla Planetarium in Calcutta, says either "the earth did not plunge completely into the comet's orbit," or a shift in time frames took the display beyond daybreak making the meteors invisible.

"I was disappointed at the failure of the expected meteor shower," said Narlikar, Director of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, who said he saw only two during the peak of the storm and 12 when the clouds thinned out.

"I think we should await results from other places to decide whether the event was less powerful than estimated or whether cloudiness and light pollution contributed to a diminished view ," he said.

Nirupama Raghavan, Director of the Nehru Planetarium here, whose team had pitched camp near Pataudi in Haryana last night to record the event, said the shower was expected to peak over China, past midnight.

Instead it peaked between Japan and Hawaii, almost two hours before time, which was why most Indians who eagerly waited for the event after midnight missed most of the show, she said.

In fact, whatever little fireworks display that Indians witnessed was the shower in its "declining phase", with probably the North-East seeing the best display.

Delhi, for instance, was expected to witness the shower around 0200 hours on Wednesday, but it probably occurred before midnight, Raghavan said.

Even if Indians had kept awake earlier, they would not have seen much of the shower as the "radiant of Leo (from which the showers appear to radiate in the sky) had not even risen when the meteor shower took place, she said. "Leo was below horizon," she added.

According to Raghavan, she saw more meteor showers on early Tuesday morning, between 0300 and 0330 hours, than at midnight. The Leonid showers that began five days ago would continue till November 20.

But the lacklustre performance of the Leonid shower brought cheer to Indian space scientists who were worried about their satellites being hit.

"It appears that no damage has been caused to the satellites," ISRO Chairman K. Kasturirangan told reporters in Bangalore. ISRO’s fleet consists of five communication and four earth-observing satellites.

Mr Kasturirangan said a close vigil was however, continuing because it could be several hours before the full extent of any damage caused by the storm was known.

Narlikar said the poor viewing could be partly due to light pollution.

"The way the clouds were lit up by city lights shows the effect of light pollution. With increased sky brightness, most of the fainter meteors are lost," Narlikar said.

The reason for the failure is not known, according to scientists of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) who say it is not the first time that the Leonid shower has disappointed star gazers. "It has happened before," said Dr T.R. Prabhu, one of the IIA scientists, adding that the institute was awaiting the arrival of the video taken from Ladakh.

US reports quoting the air force base in Colorado said the number of meteors visible per hour were 180 while other observers in East Asia put it at between 1,000 and 2,000 per hour.

In contrast, the 1966 Leonid storm consisted of 1,50,000 particles per hour.

BANGALORE: In other parts of Asia too the Leonid storm filled Asia’s night skies with flashes of light and sandblasted satellites with comet debris but caused no major damage, satellite operators said today.

As the Earth passed through the debris cloud of the Temple-Tuttle comet, meteor dust smaller than a grain of sand pelted the 600 satellites orbiting Earth that broadcast television shows, transmit paging services, carry phone calls and track weather.

Although delicate, the satellites suffered no catastrophic damage and paging companies and broadcasters said they suffered no service interruptions.

Satellite companies feared the comet debris, travelling at speeds of up to 155,000 miles per hour would create small dents that could damage satellites’ sensors or create electrical pulses causing the spacecraft to short-circuit.

In a related development astrophysicists here are eagerly awaiting chemical analysis results of a semi-burnt porous piece of rock which a Calcutta resident claims to have got from last night’s meteor rain.

The metal-tinged fragments which Sankar Dutta, a chartered accountancy student, says he saw blazing past the night sky and ‘land’ on the overhead tank in his terrace around 0130 hours, are undergoing chromatographic analysis at the M.P. Birla planetarium to ascertain its possible Leonid connections.

Mr Dutta says he broke the brittle object, about one by two inches in size, after picking it up to see what it smelt like and got a strong whiff of sulphur. In the process, he broke it into five pieces.

Planetarium Director R. Subramaniam told PTI that though a probability of it belonging to comet Tempel-Tuttle’s debris is as low as one in 100 million, astronomers are not giving up hope.

"But meteors are not so brittle as to break with slight pressure," he says adding that this was the only factor keeping him from completely believing the theory.

Otherwise, the fragment matches the complete description of a meteorite with a porous surface possibly indicating that gaseous and volatile substances inside it sought escape routes as it entered the Earth’s high temperature environs.

COLOMBO: As the entire world was star gazing last night for the meteor shower, Sri Lankan armed forces, alarmed by reports of the LTTE acquiring helicopters and planes, were firing at passing lights in the north and eastern skies to ward off rebel air strikes on sensitive targets.

Media reports quoting top Army officials here today said that an Israeli-made fast attack craft of the Sri Lankan Navy fired at an unidentified fixed wing aircraft off the Northern Jaffna coast last night but without any success.

Another naval boat patrolling the northern waters reported spotting a passing light on November 16 and fired at it. "But there was no sign of any aircraft being shot down," "The Island" newspaper said.

With Army officials themselves fuelling speculation about the possibilities of the LTTE possessing helicopters and planes, specially on the eve of the LTTE’s "martyrs week" beginning from November 21, panic and confusion gripped the ranks of the armed forces.