The field of view will be about 20 degrees. That's about twice the size of the bowl of the Big Dipper. You'll be able to watch the video from the camera on our ' Leonids 2000 ' page. This year's flight will be carrying a special radio receiver. Spherics, which are caused by lightning strokes within a couple of thousand kilometers, sound like twigs snapping or bacon sizzling on a grill.
More distant lightning causes tweeks and whistlers, which sound like descending whistles.
Dennis Gallagher, a plasma physicist at the Marshall Space Flight Center, thinks that the radio might also pick up radio signals from the meteors. You'll be able to listen in to the radio at our ' Leonids 2000 ' page, and also hear Dennis talking about how the balloon is doing, and what's happening in the sky. Our ' Leonids 2000 ' page will also have the NASA Balloon Tracker, which will show where the balloon is on a 3-D map, along with its altitude, temperature, and the surrounding air pressure. If you had been a few minutes earlier, or later, you might have missed the bugs completely, or only had a few to clean off the windshield when you got home. In the same way, when the Earth passes through a comet's cloud of debris, the particles streak through the atmosphere, burning in the beautiful display of a meteor.