Leonids from the airborne laboratory

by Jane Houston Jones

Quickie report - we just landed at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. We observed the two showers, one at 04:00 UT this morning and one at about 11:00 UT - the second one peaked a little later than predicted.

The 7 counters in our flux measurement group physically counted a total of over 17,000 meteors, I counted 3800. Imagers got spectra and more on hundreds of meteors. Although the ZHR numbers are not really in yet, I can quesstimate the peak ZHR was somewhere around 1,000 for the European shower and about 1400 for the USA shower - but those numbers will probably change.

Way cooler was seeing the meteors rain down into a massive aurora borealis display that went on for hours - visible from both the north and south facing windows as we flew west. Dozens of degrees wide and taller yet. Gotta get some zzz's now. We haven't slept for about 24 hours.