Regular visitors to the IMO website will know that work has been on-going since 2005 to improve and update the site, making it easier to use and more attractive for visitors. The main facelift to the site happened last August, but minor improvements have continued since.

Much as before, the homepage still has recent news on it, and links to all the key elements about the IMO, including its history, commissions, WGN and other publications, the online 'Who is Who' listing, practical notes on the various observing techniques, and the current year's Shower Calendar in English and several other major languages. Data archives are accessible this way too, including extracts from the VMDB back to 1984, and fireball data from 1993-1996.

A significant new segment has recently been added, entitled 'Ongoing Projects'. The idea of this is to help publicise meteor-related projects, not just those run officially by the IMO, to encourage people to contribute to such existing projects or even start new ones. The homepage at http://www.imo.net/projects provides one-paragraph summaries of the projects, with links to contacts or where more information can be found. Currently, the projects include the IMO's 'Meteor Observing Handbook', the Meteor Beliefs Project and the Unified Meteor Database. Both the latter two have further information elsewhere on the IMO site. The idea is that the various notes will be updated regularly, as fresh information becomes available, provided by the project organizers.

Additional projects are needed to help keep the pages fresh and alive, so whether you are an amateur or a professional, if you are working on something meteoric yourself, contact me to claim your own spot. Please include a short description of your project (one paragraph) to go on the homepage, and optionally a more elaborate explanation that could be linked from it. You should also provide an e-mail address, so anyone interested in your project can contact you.

If you have any comments or suggestions for further improvements to the website, don't hesitate to contact me!

To conclude, I'd like to thank our Vice-President Alastair McBeath for his help and support.

The Lyrid meteor shower exhibited normal activity in 2006. The profile below is compatible with a peak time of solar longitude 32.32 degrees as it is listed in IMO's Shower Calendar. At present, the temporal resolution of the graph is not fine enough to fix the time of maximum to a tenth of a degree (2.4h). The maximum ZHR of 17 is also close to the one found in the long-term analysis by Dubietis & Arlt (WGN 29 (2001), p. 119, WGN).

A possible enhancement due to the 1-revolution dust trail of Comet Thatcher was not observed. Lyytinen gave a time of closest encounter of 2006 April 22, 9h25m UT (meteorobs mailing list). At that time, only a single observer was out, and a weak enhancement may be buried in the small number of Lyrids available.

[CSV] Apr 2006 , Sollong ,nIND , nLYR , ZHR ,+- , lm 21 09h45m , 31.0688 , 8 , 23 , 5.1 , 1.0 ,6.26 21 22h40m , 31.5907 , 10 , 36 , 8.3 , 1.4 ,6.24 21 23h50m , 31.6428 , 8 , 37 , 12.4 , 2.0 ,5.83 22 03h45m , 31.8006 , 10 , 33 , 11.3 , 1.9 ,5.69 22 15h40m , 32.2845 , 7 , 39 , 17.2 , 2.7 ,5.89 22 21h30m , 32.5238 , 12 , 41 , 14.5 , 2.2 ,6.02 23 00h00m , 32.6226 , 9 , 40 , 11.3 , 1.8 ,5.87 23 02h35m , 32.7286 , 9 , 41 , 12.0 , 1.9 ,5.95 23 21h40m , 33.5047 , 24 , 43 , 4.6 , 0.7 ,5.92 24 00h35m , 33.6227 , 3 , 4 , 3.7 , 1.6 ,5.95 [/CSV]

The profile was computed with a constant population index of r=2.2, no additional perception corrections and a radiant height correction of sin(hR). Solar longitudes refer to equinox J2000.0. nIND is the number of observing periods, nLYR is the number of Lyrids in each average. lm is the average limiting magnitude of the observing periods involved.

We are very grateful to the following observers who contributed to this first analysis: Pierre Bader (Germany), Ricardas Balciunas (Lithuania), Ivana Belic (Serbia), Tibor Csorgei (Slovakia), Milan Darijevic (Serbia), Dariusz Dorosz (Poland), Audrius Dubietis (Lithuania), William Godley (USA), Visnja Jankov (Serbia), Ivan Jokic (Yugoslavia), Natalija Jovanovic (Serbia), Mirna Kramar (Croatia), Paul Martsching (USA), Mikhail Maslov (Russia), Koen Miskotte (Netherlands), Markku Nissinen (Finland), Jurgen Rendtel (Germany), Branislav Savic (Serbia), Teodora Savic Popovic (Serbia), Nikola Stankov (Serbia), Wesley Stone (USA), Tomislava Turcin (Croatia), Shigeo Uchiyama (Japan), Iva Valenic (Croatia), Michel Vandeputte (Belgium), Jovan Vasiljevic (Serbia), Thomas Weiland (Austria), Kim S. Youmans (USA), Ilkka Yrjola (Finland), Przemyslaw Zoladek (Poland).

This year's International Meteor Conference (IMC) will be held in Roden, a village in the North of the Netherlands. At the conference, which will take place from September 14 - 17, 2006, astronomers and meteor enthusiasts will meet and exchange scientific results. During the weekend participants will visit the Low Frequency Array (Lofar), which will be the largest radio telescope in the world. There's also the possibility to join a specialized course ahead of the conference and off course there will be some entertainment.

For more information please visit the web site of the IMC.

Visual observations of the 2006 Quadrantids received by the IMO before January 8 were used to provide a rough estimate of the 2006 activity of the meteor shower. A total of 303 Quadrantids seen during 34 hours of effective observing time were reported by 21 observers.

The maximum of the shower was lower than usual, with a ZHR of about 85 near January 3, 23h-24h or a solar longitude of 283.39 degrees (J2000.0). The expected maximum would have occurred at 18h20 UT on January 3. Only a single observer from Japan was able to report his data for that time (first line in below table) with a ZHR clearly below 100, too.

An outburst of Draconid activity was observed from Asian and eastern European geographical longitudes on October 8, 2005. The activity was also observed by radar technique with highest rates at a solar longitude of 195.44 (2005 October 8, 17h UT). With a population index of r=3.0, an equivalent ZHR near 150 was derived (Campbell-Brown et al., Univ. of Western Ontario). Visual rates may be lower due to the different range of larger masses causing visual meteors.

Last weekend the International Meteor Organization held its annual International Meteor Conference (IMC) in Oostmalle, Belgium. Nearly 100 participants from all over the world joined us for this four-day event. During more than 40 lectures both professional and amateur astronomers reported on the progress of their work in meteor science. Apart from the exchange of scientific results, the IMC is also a moment where meteor enthousiasts tighten and renew their friendship.

Before the actual conference, some of the participants already attended the Radio Meteor School in which Prof. Dr. Oleg Belkovich, Russian eminence grise in meteor astronomy, lectured on the physical and mathematical theory of radio meteor observations.

The IMC 2005 was organized by Urania, the public observatory of Antwerp. Your comments are very welcome! Lecturers are requested to submit their contribution to the Proceedings before the 15th of October.

From 14 till 17 September 2006, the Meteor Section of the Dutch Association for Meteorology and Astronomy will host the IMC in Roden, a village close to Groningen in the northern part of The Netherlands.

See you next year!