I got up at 3:00am Eastern Standard Time on Sunday morning, November 18 to attend this event. I dressed, tossed my winter observing clothes bag in my car and drive out to Atsion, in southern NJ next to route 206. I stopped along the way for some “leaded” coffee and arrived at the field behind the ranger station about 4:00am, reasonably awake. To my surprise, there were a number of cars already there so I switched off my headlights as I turned into the field and slowly creped around until I found a good parking spot. There were so many cars that I decided not to try to find any friends right away.

I switched off my interior lights and got out of my car to discover several dozen cars and at least 50  people already there with more arriving every minute. By 4:30am or so, there were considerably more cars and people but the traffic remained orderly. I put on my winter gear and unfolded my chair facing the big dipper. Leo was high in the east over my right shoulder. While all this was going on, I could see numerous meteors even though I was not yet dark adapted.

The sky was clear and dark with the usual domes of light pollution around the horizon but the north and east (the direction of the radiant) were relatively dark and overhead was very good. The sky stayed clear right through dawn. The temperature seemed to be in the high-thirties to low-forties – not bad for November. I didn’t bring a camera as I planned to just enjoy the shower visually but I did notice several folks in my area had cameras on tripods.

I was settled into my chair by 4:15am and here is what I saw:

1) I was seeing an average of about 1-2 meteors every five seconds or so. Since I can see, at most, about one-third of the sky, this translates into about 800 meteors per hour for my part of the sky. This means the all-sky average was about 2000+ per hour – an impressive rate.

2) Most of the meteors were about magnitude 2 or dimmer but some were brighter and a few were bolide class. I saw two that were very bright (deep into the minus range) and left a trail that lasted more than a minute. In general, the trails were short (5-10 degrees), lasting about 2-4 seconds and the meteors fast. 

3) The meteors were somewhat concentrated across a 45-degree section of sky radiating from Leo but there were many further away. There were also a surprising number within Leo itself, very close to the radiant.

4) There was a strong impression of short outbursts lasting 5-10 seconds and a number of times I saw several at about the same time, tightly grouped (within a few degrees of each other).

The frequency seemed to increase toward 5:00am when the eastern sky begin to brighten. By 5:30 it may have reached an all-sky rate of 3000+ per hour but that’s just a guess. As the sky brightened, there were still many meteors visible. Even when I started packing up around 6:00am, when the sky was really starting to brighten (but before sunrise) you could still look up and see meteors every few seconds no matter which direction you looked in. The crowd was good but some of the folks didn’t know to turn off their headlights as they arrived or departed but the meteors were so frequent and bright that this didn’t really detract from the view. There were waves of  “oooo’s” and “aaaah’s” and some shouts and “whoops” and I added my own sound effects a number of times.

As the sky brightened my friend Donna found me and as we stood talking we just kept seeing more meteors every few seconds. I left about 6:15 and as I drive home I could still see an occasional bright meteor near the horizon through the windshield. This was easily the best meteor show I’ve seen to date.

- Lane