IMCCE Meteor Shower Ephemerides Server

Introduction:

Given the result of the 2008 Leonids campaign we can re-consider the predictions of the 2009 Leonids. The revised post-prediction for 2008 were the following:

Observations show that the maximum occured ~1hr later than expected. The ZHR was close to what was forecasted. Note the ihgh f_M value, coming from the perturbations of the planet, and Jupiter in particular.

Results

The situation for 2009 is the following:

The exact same trail (1466) as in 2008 will be encountered in Nov 2009. The forecastings are the following:

f_M is less than in 2008 but the trail will be much closer to the Earth, explaining why we expect a ZHR reaching the 'half-storm' level (a storm is typically defined as ZHR=1000). The time of maximum may be later than expected, as in 2008: the whole calculation of the orbit of the comet has to be done before we are able to provide a time of maximum with greater confidence.

So 2009 will not see a Leonid storm, but an outburst that will reach 5 times the level of the Perseids.