Hundreds Brave Morning Cold To Watch Meteor Shower

They awakened by the hundreds at an hour when even most undergraduates had long since gone to bed. Although it was frosty outside, they huddled in courtyards, on beaches, and on rooftops, hoping to see a once-in-a-lifetime astromonical phenomenon.

And this year’s Leonid meteor shower, many said, did not disappoint—despite Tuesday morning’s full moon and the vast ambient light over much of Cambridge’s sky.

“It was beautiful, definitely worth it,” said Victoria Wobber ’05, who watched the meteor shower from the Weeks Memorial Footbridge, which spans the Charles River between Winthrop House and the Business School.

From there, Wobber said, she was able to see a meteor streaking across the night sky every few minutes. “Some were really long,” she said, “and shot all the way across the sky.”

Across campus at the Science Center, more than 150 students gathered on the roof near the Knowles Telescope and domed observatory hoping to catch a better glimpse from up high. By 5:30 a.m., when the shower was expected to peak in intensity, students were stepping over rows of huddled bodies hoping to find a spot from which to look toward the sky.

According to Ann Marie Cody ’03, one of the officers of Student Astronomers at Harvard Radcliffe (STAHR), students were invited to a “viewing party” atop the Science Center after it became clear that a group trip to see the shower from a Glouscester beach would be oversubscribed.

Michael Abbriano ’05 rolled out of bed and made his way to the top of the Science Center, but said he was underwhelmed by what he saw. “I thought the Science Center would get us above the Cambridge lights to see the stars better,” he said.

Although a Leonid meteor shower occurs every November, this year’s event was predicted to be much more robust than usual, with meteors falling at a “storm” rate of thousands per hour.

According to astronomers, the next time the Leonid shower will be this strong again is in 2099.

Both the Harvard Astronomy Club and the Harvard Outing Club organized trips to help students get away from the lights of Harvard Square. The Harvard Astronomy Club and Environmental Action Committee’s trip to Gloucester left around 4 a.m. in five Phillips Brooks House vans and four other cars.

The 90 or so students who got out to Wingaersheek Beach in Gloucester, on Massachusetts’s Cape Ann, saw not only the brilliant meteor shower, but also Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn.

“The beach in Gloucester was an amazing place to observe the show. It was gorgeous, we saw huge shooting stars and great meteors—although the full moon may have overshadowed some,” said Dave Rennard ’03, one of the organizers of the trip.

The Harvard Outing Club didn’t venture quite as far, settling on the intramural fields at Soldiers Field Park as its group viewing area.

Currier House resident Lacey Whitmire ’05 and eight of her friends piled into a 4-person vehicle to get down to Soldiers Field from the quad.

“Our plans changed from trying to get seats on the bus to Gloucester, to the Weeks Footbridge near the river, to finally our adventure out to the IM fields,” Whitmire said. “The show was cool, there were a lot of people out there too, but I don’t think it was dark enough to see all the showers.”

A group of 14 students took a van and drove 20 minutes out Route 2 to Walden Pond in Concord for the show, while some quad residents who didn’t want to trek to the river tried the quad’s Botanical Gardens in hopes of finding a decent view.

The Leonid shower occurs each November when the Earth’s orbit passes through the trail of dust left by comet Tempel-Tuttle, which swings around the sun once every 33 years. The dust grains, traveling at 158,000 miles per hour, glow and vaporize as friction heats them up in the upper atmosphere and produces streaks of light.

The Earth intersects those debris trails each year in mid-November, but this year it crossed two unusually dense trails, laid down in 1767 and 1866, which led to the increased rate of this year’s shower. The peak over North America was supposed to occur shortly after 5 a.m., when most students observed the show.

Richard Lichtenstein ’04 got up at 5:20 a.m., walked out into the Adams House courtyard, looked up and saw two meteors.

“You don’t have to go out to a specific location to see the meteors, you can just walk outside and look up,” Lichtenstein said.