by Robert Leyland
LM was about 4.5 at zenith, and away from the moon, and 4 or worse everywhere else. There was a bit of moisture at high altitude, which made the seeing very soft, and increased the moon glow. On a good new moon night we will usually get mag 6+ skies.
We had 6 astronomer types there, and maybe 10 general public only a few of whom took our invitation to view through the telescopes assembled. Some nice views of Saturn, along with a-b-c comparisons of eyepieces. The usual star-party fun :-)
from 8pm to 2am I counted 19 Leonids and 2 sporadics. Of these 3 were mag -2 or better fireballs, brighter than any star in the sky. Several were quite bright, including one at 8:01 pm that shot right by Deneb, but not quite fireball class.
There were some great colored meteors too, greens and reds mostly.
At 2AM my counts were around 1 per minute, and I switched to photographic mode, snapping a series of 1 minutes exposures with an old OM-1 and a fisheye lens. I also made a few 1:30 and :30 sec exposures too.
I am sure that the Leonids are photo-averse, as no sooner than I had ended one exposure, I'd hear an "oooh" from the seated crowd. Sadly I messed up the first roll as the film didn't advance properly, but I'm more hopeful for the second roll shot between 2:36 and 3:29 AM.
After 3:30 AM we watched the "stragglers" and it seems to me that the seemed to come in flurries. We'd get nothing for several minutes, and then 2-5 in less than a minute, followed by another quiet time.
Most of the crowd left between 3 and 4, Doug Davis and I closed up the area at about 4:30.
Summary: a better than average Leonid shower, not a storm, possibly a squall.