Leonids 2018: prediction of activity
to the list of predictions
Fig. 1. Space-temporal projection of Leonids trails parts onto their minimal distance passages in 2018 (correspondence between colours of the particles and their ejection velocities can be seen here).
Fig. 3. Assumed profile of overall Leonid activity (blue line) and its background component (red line).
In 2018 the single background Leonids maximum is expected with traditional ZHR level of 10-20 meteors. According to IMO data it occurs at solar longitude 235.27°, which corresponds 17 Novemnber 22:39 UT for 2018. Some separate meteors with high average brightness (thoung perhaps without any detectable submaxima) could be produced by 1466 trail around 9:30 UT on 20 November. The waxing gibbous Moon still leaves some period of dark skies in the morning.
References
1. "Comet's dust 2.0" program by S. Shanov and S. Dubrovsky. [Used for orbital computations.]
2. Lyytinen E, van Flandern T. "Predicting the strength of Leonid outbursts", 2000, Icarus, P. 158-160.
3. Jenniskens P. Meteor showers and their parent comets, 2006, 780 p. 4. Kasuo Kinoshita, http://jcometobs.web.fc2.com/ [Orbital elements of the comet 55P Tempel-Tuttle]