Leonid MAC '99 - News on the Leonid shower. Models suggest that the second night will be the better one, but analysis of last year's flux measurements onboard the Leonid MAC seem to indicate that the pattern is slightly shifted and the first night may be the better one.
Californian observers can catch a glimpse of it around midnight.
A tool is on the net that people can use to see how much activity is expected from their observing location. Not all meteoric matter is atomized during the plunge in Earth's atmosphere. In a recent paper, Jenniskens et al. postulated that the organic matter may be lost in the form of large complex molecules that can readily emit the heat deposited by the violent collisions with air molecules before falling appart altogether. Such large molecules are not easily detected, except by their heat emission. Indeed, Ray Russell et al. discovered the fingerprint of organic matter in what may be meteoric debris in the path of a bright Leonid fireball.