Expedition to Observe the Leonid Meteor Storm of November 2001

EXPEDITION ANNOUNCEMENT

[Updates shown in red. See also note at end about Bulletin #2. Note that costs are $250 pp. higher after Sept. 15, the last date for the group fares.]

Eclipse Edge Expeditions announces its next meteor storm observing expedition to Guam Island, a tropical paradise in the western Pacific Ocean, to view the predicted Leonid meteor storm (not shower) in the early morning hours of Monday, November 19, 2001. The expedition will last from Nov. 14-20. Our expedition begins with a Welcome Reception at the impressive Underwater Museum of Guam, and concludes with our traditional closing banquet. In between, we have arranged a full astronomy program and optional visits to sites of historical and cultural interest. Many leisure-time activities are also available. Costs will range from $250-$2900 per person, depending on whether air and hotel are included, number in party, point of origin, and quality of accommodations. A typical cost for a double occupancy economy program originating in the U.S. would be $1900 per person.

Guam is a U.S. Territory. Technically, passports are not required for U.S. citizens, although proof of citizenship is. However, passports are highly recommended to expedite passage through customs and immigration services. Language, currency, electricity, the phone system, and most of the societal infrastructure will be familiar to U.S. mainland residents. Guam had a major military presence during World War II and for many years thereafter. Today, Guam is a thriving tropical paradise, with tourism rapidly on the rise. It is a favorite destination for travelers from many oriental countries who wish to experience the flavor of “visiting the U.S.” Our optional tours packages illustrate the richness of Guam’s history and culture.

A Brief History of Meteor Storms

About 5 a.m. on the morning of November 13, 1833, people throughout the eastern United States were awakened from their sleep by lights from outside their homes. The lights turned out to be the flashes of fireballs! Sounder sleepers were awakened by excited voices that rose and fell, like a chorus, as the brighter meteors streamed into and out of view. At every instant dozens of meteors could be seen, filling the witnesses with awe and fear. A few of the brightest fireballs were both bigger in appearance and brighter than a Full Moon. 43 years later, Richard Devens described the scene as “the most grand and brilliant celestial phenomenon ever beheld and recorded by man.”

On the scientific front, this event led directly to the first widespread recognition that rocks sometimes fell from the skies, because all observers could plainly see that all the meteors were emanating from a single place among the stars, a place in the constellation Leo that appeared to move with the stars as the Earth rotated. On the religious front, so many people thought this event was, or foreshadowed, the coming of the end of the world that it is said to have been the primary impetus for the revival of religious fundamentalism in the United States that soon followed.

A “meteor storm” is distinguished from a common meteor shower by its intensity. If viewed in a clear, dark, moonless sky, a good meteor shower can produce about one meteor per minute on average, or occasionally more. That corresponds to 60 meteors per hour. By definition, the threshold for declaring a shower a “meteor storm” is a rate that exceeds 1000 meteors per hour, an average of one every 3.6 seconds.

On November 14, 1866, another Leonid meteor storm was seen in Europe. This confirmed a 33-34 year periodicity of the phenomenon, suspected because of reports of a meteor storm over the western Atlantic Ocean in November of 1799. From this event we also learned that the meteors in these storms follow nearly the same orbit as Comet Temple-Tuttle, which has a period of 33.2 years.

Based on this history, worldwide anticipation was high and widespread in 1899 when astronomers predicted the next Leonid meteor storm. But this time, the storm failed to materialize anywhere, leading to the assessment that this “… was the worst blow ever suffered by astronomy to the eyes of the public, and has indirectly done immense harm to the spread of the science among our citizens.” – Charles Oliver.

Hope was still high in 1932 and 1933, when a Leonid storm again failed to materialize. So astronomers concluded that the meteor orbits had been perturbed by the planets and dispersed. As a consequence, little public mention was made of the possibilities before the November 17, 1966 encounter of the Earth with the orbit of the meteor swarm. But the Leonids, as if only publicity shy, put on one of their most spectacular shows ever. In New Mexico and the western United States, lucky pre-dawn observers reported more meteors than could be counted, with peak rates reaching something on the order of 40 meteors per second! Witnesses described the experience as bringing home to them how fast the Earth they were standing on is actually rushing through space.

That brings us to 1998-1999. Several meteor experts predicted a possible meteor storm in November, 1998, leading NASA to put several satellites into a protective configuration and to postpone manned spaceflights until after the potential danger to unprotected astronauts had passed. Not only was there no storm, but to further embarrass the astronomers, the peak of the annual Leonid meteor shower (at several hundred meteors per hour off the west coast of Africa) happened about 16 hours before it was predicted to happen over Mongolia.

Up to that time, no Leonid meteor storm had ever been successfully predicted. Even the astronomers who have been bold enough to assert that a possible storm might occur had never been successful at predicting which part of the Earth would be facing the shower when it occurred. Indeed, Leonid storms are visible only over a rather narrow band of longitude because they peak during daylight hours when the radiant point in Leo is overhead. So visibility requires being at a longitude where the sky is still dark enough and the radiant point is well above the horizon. One must therefore know the time of the peak to within an hour or two to have any certainty of knowing what part of the Earth will be favored. Moreover, bright moonlight can interfere with meteor visibility; so only years when the Moon is set or near New Moon are suitable for viewing most storms in all their splendor.

For more information about the history of Leonid meteor storms, see the excellent book “The Heavens on Fire” by Mark Littmann, published by Cambridge University Press (1998).

How the 1999 Meteor Storm Was Predicted

The exploded planet hypothesis (eph) is an alternative theory for the origin of asteroids, comets, and meteoroids, the small bodies in space that are members of our solar system. Despite strong, undisputed evidence in its favor, the eph has not gained in popularity in the present climate of funding astronomy research through a limited number of channels, each committed to the support of other theories. But that has not kept the eph from being successful at making several spectacular correct predictions, in defiance of the consensus among active astronomers. For example, eph-proponents predicted to the International Astronomical Union in 1991 that at least one satellite would be found by spacecraft making close fly-bys of asteroids in the early 1990s. And that happened in 1993 when the Galileo spacecraft flew by Ida, only the second asteroid to be viewed close up, and found that it had a satellite or moon of its own.

More recently, the eph has predicted that comets, too, have satellites, and that the Hubble Space Telescope would find satellites orbiting the nucleus of Comet Hale-Bopp. That almost didn’t happen because the comet could not be viewed by the space telescope while it was relatively close to Earth because the telescope would have had to point dangerously close to the direction of the Sun. But as the comet receded from Sun and Earth, JPL astronomer Z. Sekanina found at least one, and possibly three, small moons orbiting the nucleus of that large, bright comet. For details, see the web site at http://tmgnow.com/repository/cometary/sekanina.html.

During the early part of 1999, Meta Research associate Esko Lyytinen of Finland attempted to use constraints implied by the exploded planet hypothesis about the nature of comets and the material that orbits their nuclei to study the Leonid meteor streams. The new considerations implied by the use of this model are that the meteors were previously orbiting the nucleus of their parent comet, and escaped under the action of tidal forces near the time when the comet was closest to the Sun, through a specific place in their orbits known as a “Lagrange point”, and moving with a specific relative velocity in a specific direction. This eliminates many of the degrees of freedom in mainstream models, where meteors are ejected from the comet nucleus via jets activated by unknown processes at unknown times, usually correlated with approaches to the Sun when the comet is hottest.

Use of the new eph constraints enabled Mr. Lyytinen (a doctoral candidate) to model the behavior of meteoroids escaped from Comet Temple-Tuttle with impressive clarity. He is now able to essentially predict each of the past major Leonid meteor storms with his model, which is a process different from successfully fitting past data with a new model. He has learned that meteoroids escape from the comet into its orbit on practically every approach to the Sun (every 33.2 years), creating a new meteor stream. Moreover, these meteor streams are driven by planetary perturbations and solar radiation pressure into orbits that can intersect the Earth’s orbit, even though the parent comet does not. Then on later revolutions, if conditions are right, the Earth can plow through one of the meteor streams, producing a meteor storm. In some years, the Earth encounters meteoroids from one older stream, while in other years it may encounter meteoroids from several, or perhaps not encounter any of the streams. The 1966 meteor storm is well-predicted in both intensity and time as the Earth plowing through meteoroids escaping the comet in 1899.

An article by Esko Lyytinen describing his method and predicting the 1999 storm appears in the September 15 issue of the Meta Research Bulletin (MRB). (See http://metaresearch.org for information about subscriptions.) A summary of the predictions and the observed results from the December 15 issue of the MRB appears in Table I (see the final 1999 Leonid trip report). This was the first successful prediction of the phenomenon, and it was the only prediction by any astronomer that was correct both for the time and peak rate of the event. But as can be seen from the Table, the prediction was correct even with respect to details. This success is well beyond what reasonable chance would allow, and strongly suggests that the underlying model is superior to any other in current use.

Table I. Comparison of prediction and observations for 1999 storm.

Based on the Lyytinen prediction and our confidence in it, Eclipse Edge Expeditions organized an expedition to Cyprus in the Mediterranean to attempt observations. Despite some interference from clouds at the peak time, the expedition participants knew that they had come to the right place, and saw more meteors than any of them had seen before in their lifetimes.

The 2000 Heavy Meteor Shower Prediction

A weak storm or heavy shower was predicted for the Eastern United States region in November 2000, but strong moonlight interfered with observations. Nevertheless, activity close to that predicted was observed.

Lyytinen and Van Flandern published a technical paper describing their prediction method: “Predicting the strength of Leonid outbursts”, Earth Moon and Planets 82-83, 149-166 (2000). Once again in 2000, that prediction was the most successful, matching the time, place, and meteor rates for each of the three peaks as closely as expected for each. The full story appears in MRB 9, 52-57 (2000).

The 2001 Meteor Storm Prediction

The Lyytinen model predicts that the meteor stream released in 1866 will encounter the Earth in November 2001, visible over the Western Pacific region. The predicted peak rate is slightly stronger than what was observed in 1999. It is unusual for strong storms to occur four years after the passage of the parent comet. However, now that we understand better how to predict these events, we see that others like this have occurred before in history, but often under unfavorable viewing conditions. For example, this predicted 2001 storm would not normally have been noticed if it had not been predicted because it occurs over no large land mass or population center.

In 2001, the Moon will be just three days past new, and will be below the horizon at the time of the storm. In 2001, no fewer than five streams will pass close to the Earth, so that weak storms may persist for several hours before the predicted strong one arrives.

For our expedition, our chosen site is Guam Island, the southernmost in the Mariana chain. At Guam, the meteor radiant will pass overhead. The island optimizes clear sky probabilities and accessibility, with a beautiful tropical island setting.

The Expedition Program and Costs

Our group flights will be arranged through Perry Travel. Our “professional package”, the core of our program, is priced at $250 per person. This includes our astronomy program consisting of three lectures (related astronomy background, Leonid meteors history, observing and photography tips), the southern-night-sky observing session, bus transportation from our hotel to the meteor storm observing site and back, professionally guided observations of the storm, site facilities and observing aids, plus snacks and breakfast on site and en route. This core program is available to persons from various countries making their own air and hotel arrangements.

Adding air travel via Asiana Korean Airlines from Los Angeles, and Sun Route hotel accommodations for the time on Guam (five nights), plus our welcome reception and closing banquet to the professional package brings the basic program cost to: $2300/single, $1900/double or shared, $1800/triple per person. The Sun Route also offers condo units suitable for a quad (4 people), for which the corresponding cost is $1750 per person. Discounts (typically 25%) are also available for children under 12.

Add $200 per person to upgrade to Continental flights via Hawaii with optional stopover, in place of Asiana flights via Korea. Inexpensive connections from other U.S. cities to Los Angeles or Houston may add $50-$250 pp. The Sun Route hotel is an excellent off-beach accommodation with pool located nearby the Outrigger. See http://www.sunroute.com.gu for hotel information.

For choosing a flight from the U.S., here are the main considerations. The less expensive Asiana flights take longer and arrive at less convenient times. However, they offer a free stopover in Seoul, Korea, which boasts the best shopping in Asia. Special extension trips could be arranged from Seoul, such as to Hong Kong. Asiana has a reputation for excellent in-flight service, winning awards for that in 2000. Out of all the major carriers in the world, Asiana has the youngest fleet, with an average age of just over 3 years. And Advantage (American Airlines) members would earn points on Asiana.

The Continental flight has its own conveniences. It affords the luxury of connecting through Hawaii which, like Guam, requires no passport. A stopover of up to 3 days in Honolulu is allowed on the return. The flights are hours shorter and arrive at more convenient times. One Pass members would be able to gain a lot of miles, and could upgrade to business class using points. Those traveling from cities other than Los Angeles would be able to use Continental all the way though, connecting through the most convenient U.S. gateway city. The scheduling and pricing of such connecting flights may also be favorably affected.

Many levels of hotel upgrade are available, all at the Outrigger Guam Resort (http://www.outrigger.com/details/property.asp?code=ogm), which will serve as the expedition “home base”. Here is a sample of specific choices and the total supplemental cost per person:

Standard Ocean View    $100    Deluxe Ocean    View    $150
Ocean Front     $200    Voyager’s Club Ocean    View    $300

Voyager’s Club rooms are on the 20th and 21st floors and include robe and slippers, continental breakfast, afternoon cocktails and canapés in the club lounge, and personalized concierge service.

All packages that include accommodations also include transportation from and to the airport in Guam, the welcome reception, and the closing banquet. Note that meals are not included except as mentioned above. Many restaurants and a shopping plaza with a grocery store are nearby to supplement the excellent but pricey hotel dining.

Optional Tours on Guam

The beaches of Guam make excellent playgrounds. The Outrigger Resort is surrounded by beautiful grounds that include a fresh water pool, water slides, and sun deck. Activities include water sports, horseback riding, golf, shopping, village fiestas, and night life. Snorkeling and diving adventures can be arranged. Other points of interest:

• Latte stones used for construction by the Chamorros, dating to circa 500 A.D.
• Chamorro Villages – experience culture, lifestyle, food, and dance.
• War memorials such as the War in the Pacific National Historical Park.
• Sea studies department at the University of Guam.
• The Guam Museum.
• Hiking tours to waterfalls, unique caves, beaches and jungles to view flora and fauna of the island.
• Two-Lovers’ Point – an outstanding viewpoint of the island’s white-sand beaches and lush hillsides from the site where legend has it that two Chamorro lovers, forbidden to marry by their parents, jumped to their deaths from the 378-foot cliff.

Guides are available for formal tours of the island with any theme of interest.

Some Extension Trip Options

Extension trip options to Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, or other Pacific Islands are under consideration. Please advise Paula at Perry Travel of your interests.

How does one join the expedition?

The first step is to fill out and send in the registration forms together with a deposit of $500 per person to reserve your space. You will receive an acknowledgment of registration and receipt by mail or e-mail. If we cannot accept your registration because space is full, your full payment will be returned without processing. This deposit will remain 90% refundable until April 30, 2001. The deadline for payments in full for all participants is August 3, which is also the deadline for cancellations at 80%. Cancellations by September 30 may receive a 50% refund. Cancellations by October 31 may receive a 25% refund. Cancellations in the final two weeks are generally not refundable. However, in cases where we can find a last-minute substitute that the airlines and/or hotels will accept, we will refund any portion of your fee that we are able to recover. You should expect that to be minimal, even though a personal emergency may have arisen through no fault of your own.

[Note added 2001/08/17: Because many people are learning of this expedition only as news sources cover it, we will continue to extend the deadline for registration and payment in full as long as we can. It will probably be possible to go with our group even at the last minute. However, group fare and hotel options are gradually disappearing, and costs may be expected to rise sharply as the lead time shrinks. Please check with us for the latest price/availability information.]

If you wish to guaranty your travel payments against illness, bankruptcy, default, or certain natural disasters that might prevent you (or any of us) from going, we recommend travel insurance available inexpensively through Perry Travel within five days of joining the expedition. Travel insurance costs are 5.5% of the total cost.

What disclaimers apply

Eclipse Edge Expeditions will make its best efforts to provide all accommodations and services as described herein. But many factors are beyond the control of the organization. Especially, we cannot control the weather! We will give priority to meteor viewing and move about if some advantage can be gained with respect to clouds. But ultimately, should nature not cooperate, the organization cannot provide compensation to its surely disappointed members. Likewise, should the flood of demand for flights, rooms, buses, and services cause some unexpected disruption in either your travel schedule or in the reservations or commitments we have from airlines, hotels, and other service providers, we will do our best to seek alternatives suitable to most participants, but ultimately cannot be responsible for such disruptions as are not within our control. You should be aware that demand for facilities and services at times of special astronomical events is often so intense that even guaranteed, prepaid contracts are sometimes not honored by businesses in foreign countries. We make every effort to ensure that our contractors are reliable, and/or that alternative arrangements can be made on short notice whenever possible.

To these usual caveats, we must add that only one Leonid meteor storm has now been successfully predicted. The theoretical basis of this prediction is published in the September 15 issue of the Meta Research Bulletin, and a technical article is being prepared for submission to a mainstream journal. We have confidence that the methodology is basically sound. But meteor streams are not yet so well understood that anyone can guaranty the circumstances of any particular encounter. Therefore, if a meteor storm does not occur, the scientists involved will certainly be embarrassed, but we cannot provide compensation to participants for this failure. You are invited to participate in what we hope will be a unique and memorable occasion. But remember that predicting meteor storms is still not an established art, and lacks the kind of certainty associated with solar eclipses.

We also will do our best to ensure that all scheduled speakers and hosts appear, but should illness or injury or other events beyond our control intervene, we may have to substitute. We will do our best to ensure that you will not be disappointed. At the very least, we hope our week will be an educational experience and an adventure to remember even if the weather fails to cooperate on the night of the meteor storm.

If something unexpected were to prevent part or the whole expedition from going at all, then we would refund the portion of your payments that is not already spent, plus the part that is refundable to us. But some portions of the costs must be paid well in advance, and might not be refundable to us in the event of political unrest, natural disaster, or other unforeseen problem. All we can assure you is that Eclipse Edge Expeditions and its personnel will not keep any of your money if the expedition is canceled and will act diligently to recover all funds already expended on your behalf. No trip cancellation or medical insurance is provided by Eclipse Edge Expeditions, but travel insurance is available to purchase separately through Perry Travel.

Your signature on the registration form acknowledges and accepts these conditions.