From: Alan Fitzsimmons, La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain.
Date: Nov. 17th.

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This message initially raised confusion because it was assumed
that the 1000-2000 meteors/hr were Zenith Hourly Rates. In fact,
these are group counts and relate to the whole sky.  - Peter
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You may like to know that we had a very impressive display
last night from here in La Palma, the Canary Islands.
Counting over the entire sky, but not correcting for
radiant altitude, we were obsrving ~ 1000 per hour at
03:40 UT, which had climbed to ~2000 per by 04:30 UT.

As reported by other observers in other displays, the
number of bright meteors and fireballs was astounding.
I include below a message that I sent out on usenet
near dawn.


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From: Alan Fitzsimmons, La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain.
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 05:32:01 +0000

We're at the summit of the island of La Palma in the Canary
islands, at the UK Isaac Newton Telescope. We are having
an amazing display here. From doing 2-minute counts, we
were seeing roughly 1000 meteors per hour at 03:30 UT,
climbing to roughly 2000 per hour at 04:30 UT. These
are estimates of the all sky rate uncorrected for
the height of Leo above the horizon. It may be an
underestimate, as we are mere professional astronomers
and are not used to this kind of activity - we feel that
we may be missing a number of faint meteors (less
than 3rd mag).

The number of bright meteors and fireballs is astounding.
Every couple of minutes you get a bright flash behind you
and you turn around to see the ion trail fading. The
brightest meteors have bright green trails, often
with bright red heads.

The rate still seems to be increasing - we've just
gone outside the control room of the telescope and we
are approaching 1 meteor per second. It looks like rates
over the Eastern US may be very high. However the zodiacal
light is now quite bright, so twilight is approaching.

Hoping you have clear skies wherever you are,

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From: Alan Fitzsimmons, La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain.
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 18:17:48 -0500

Having heard some other reports of meteor counts, I
thought that I had better make clear how we counted
on La Palma, so that people compare like with like.

When it became obvious we had major activity, we
realised that we should make some kind of count. However
we did not know how to make estimates of ZHR's and
other associated parameters. So we used the simplest
obvious solution. As there were about 6 of us, we arranged
ourselves so that we could see most of the sky between us.
Then over a timed two-minute period we simply shouted
out counts when a meteor was seen. Multiplying by 30 gave us
the rough estimate of the number that could be observed
per hour over the whole sky.

So the ~1000 per hour we saw at 03:40 UT and the ~2000
per hour at 04:30 UT are if you could see the entire sky at
once. A single observer would see less than this, by perhaps
a factor 3-4.

A few personal comments now that we have some more time:
A colleague went outside for a smoke at around 05:15 UT, and
only got halfway through his cigarette  before he'd seen 35
meteors, mostly fireballs. I went out again at 05:50, and on
average could see a meteor every 2-3 seconds. You would get a
gap for perhaps 10 seconds, then 3 would occur almost
simultaneously, quickly followed by another. Before this
peak we had certainly got the impression that sometimes they
came in bunches, but I guess it could be Poisson statistics,
or chance as it's better known.

As with the other observers, we found the colours stunning.
Bright green trails, with orange-red heads. A few has vivid
violet colours. The flashes easily cast shadows, but remember
that we were dark adapted under clear skies at 8,000 ft.
For some reason, many of the meteors we observed were at low
altitude near the horizon. But even that was great, as people
saw the reflection of the fireballs on the ocean.

I cannot describe the simple joy that everyone outside felt
at witnessing this spectacle. Reactions ranged from silent
appreciation to almost maniacal laughter.

I saw two radiant fireballs, coming at us almost head on, but I
missed a third as I was inside at the time). Watching the ion
trails bend in the middle due to upper-atmosphere winds was
fantastic. One near the sickle in Leo lasted long enough
to appear almost corkscrew shaped from our viewpoint.

The last meteor we saw was at 07:25 against the bright twilight sky
in the west, just a few minutes before sunrise. We were driving
down from the telescopes to the residencia where we sleep, and
it appeared right in front of us throught the car windshield.