Campaign to catch thousands of falling stars

Michael Schmidhuber is a man with a mission. Flying high above the clouds, his task is to capture video images of
thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of shooting stars.

Michael has been enlisted by the ESA Space Science Department in ESTEC (Netherlands) to participate in an international
project to study the famous Leonid meteor shower. If all goes well, he should be able to witness one of the most majestic
sights in nature — a meteor storm to rival the most glorious of man-made firework displays.

Over a period of four nights around the predicted peak of meteor activity, he will climb aboard a specially equipped NASA
Boeing 707 with scientists from the United States and Europe for the photo opportunity of a lifetime.

Unfortunately, Michael has been given a full research programme, so he won’t have much time to admire the view.

“There are windows in the ceiling of the aeroplane through which we can point our cameras,” said Michael. “The cameras
will be fixed to a kind of rail so that they can stand alone to take video images of the shower.”

In order to avoid getting a stiff neck, Michael will be given a useful little gadget to wear on his head.

“The view of the night sky seen in my camera will be fed to a Video Head Display so that I can see everything in the
camera’s field of view,” he explained. “We say what we see, then someone notes it down, and every 15 minutes or so the
meteor count is forwarded to a NASA ground station.”

Counting meteors is an important job. Although most meteors are no larger than a grain of sand, the Leonids travel so fast
(40 times faster than a rifle bullet) that if they plough into a satellite they can cause serious damage. The results from
Michael’s vigil will be fed to satellite operators around the world so that they can take measures to protect their
satellites if they see a storm building.

After a rehearsal on 15-16 November, the work will start in earnest the following night. However, the most exciting
time of all will come on 17-18 November, when the number of meteors is expected to reach its peak.

“Our observations will last much longer on this night,” said Michael. “The plane will fly against the Earth’s rotation so
that we stay in darkness for the longest time possible.”

So how does he feel about his mission to catch a shower of falling stars?

“Although I’m a keen amateur astronomer, I’ve never done anything like this before,” he admitted. “However, I’m used to
counting meteors and know what to look for.”

“Curiously, I’ve never actually seen the Leonids,” he added. “I looked last year, but the cloud cover was too bad.”

If you want to read about Michael’s adventures, extracts from his diary will be published on this Web site during each
day of the Leonid meteor campaign.

[NOTE: Diary of the ESA Space Science Department Leonid99 team is at http://sci.esa.int/leonids99/l-diary1.html]