Tilden Park, 0230 to 0500 PST, Wednesday 11/18/98:

Skies partly cloudy w/ altocumulus, clearing. Limiting magnitude around 5 at zenith. A big mob of ~ 100 people (!) at one point.

The Leonid meteor shower this AM was not at all strong, with the best hourly average occuring during the last hour with about 20 noted per hour. I saw three total that would qualify as "fireballs" and one of them, the brightest and longest lasting, was not a Leonid at all, but may have been a sporadic. This meteor was much slower than the Leonids (which zipped along very quickly with short trails) and had a wavy trail that stretched perhaps 40 degrees. Est. Mag. -5. The two Leonid "fireballs" were about magnitude -3 or so, and the remainder were ~ mag -1 or dimmer.

Other observers reached similar conclusions. For some of the period I did not watch, as I erected the only telescope present and so provided entertainment for various people during the early activity lulls.

By all accounts I have read, this was not the year. November 17, 1999 - mark your calendars. Luckily, the moon will be at about first quarter and will set around midnight. Pray for clear skies.

Bruce Jensen