Leonids 2004, first results

The 2004 Leonids were not expected to show strong activity.
Yet predictions have been given by various authors for
encounters chiefly with the 8-revolution dust trail of
parent comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle on November 19. Slight
chances of activity enhancement were were found for the
old 30-revolution dust trail on November 8.

Very few observations have been reported so far. An overview
of the results deduced from these observations is given
in the table below.

  
  ------------------------------------------------------  
  Date (UT) Time Solarlong nINT nLEO ZHR  
  ------------------------------------------------------  
  Nov 8.9710 23:18 226.834  8  3  7 +- 4  
  Nov 9.0210 00:30 226.885  6  5  8 +- 3  
  Nov 12.097 02:20 229.978  4  7  4 +- 1  
  Nov 14.230 05:31 232.125  1  2 (13) +- 8  
  Nov 15.984 23:37 233.893  7  12  5 +- 1  
  Nov 16.916 21:59 234.832  5  25  20 +- 4  
  Nov 17.652 15:39 235.575  10  97  20 +- 2  
  Nov 18.513 12:19 236.443  7  52  16 +- 2  
  Nov 18.920 22:05 236.854  5  69  38 +- 5  
  Nov 19.235 05:38 237.172  6  23  13 +- 3  
  Nov 19.480 11:31 237.419  6 114  23 +- 2  
  Nov 19.970 23:17 237.914  4  15  16 +- 4  
  ------------------------------------------------------  
  

At the moment, a broad background activity component is found
from the data. No clear peaks of activity are detected for
Nov 8 and Nov 19. Nevertheless, they may still be detected
from the full data set once it is utilized.

This tentative activity profile is based on the observing
periods by Alexandre Amorim (Brazil), Lars Bakman (Denmark), Ricardas Balciunas (Lithania), Pete Bias (USA), Andreas Buchmann (Switzerland), Robert Javer (Italy), Ralf Koschack (Germany), Peter van Leuteren (the Netherlands), Ming-hui Liang (China), Robert Lunsford (USA), Adam Marsh (Australia), Pierre Martin (Canada), Mikhail Maslov (Russia), Alastair McBeath (UK), Norman McLeod (USA), Jens O. Olesen (Denmark), Carles Pineda Ferre (Spain), Jurgen Rendtel (Germany), George Spalding (UK), Wesley Stone (USA), Michel Vandeputte (Belgium), Quanzhi Ye (China), Jin Zhu (China).

The solar longitudes refer to equinox J2000.0, ZHRs are
computed with a population index of r=2.0.