An outburst of Draconid activity was observed from Asian and eastern European geographical longitudes on October 8, 2005. The activity was also observed by radar technique with highest rates at a solar longitude of 195.44 (2005 October 8, 17h UT). With a population index of r=3.0, an equivalent ZHR near 150 was derived (Campbell-Brown et al., Univ. of Western Ontario). Visual rates may be lower due to the different range of larger masses causing visual meteors.

Last weekend the International Meteor Organization held its annual International Meteor Conference (IMC) in Oostmalle, Belgium. Nearly 100 participants from all over the world joined us for this four-day event. During more than 40 lectures both professional and amateur astronomers reported on the progress of their work in meteor science. Apart from the exchange of scientific results, the IMC is also a moment where meteor enthousiasts tighten and renew their friendship.

Before the actual conference, some of the participants already attended the Radio Meteor School in which Prof. Dr. Oleg Belkovich, Russian eminence grise in meteor astronomy, lectured on the physical and mathematical theory of radio meteor observations.

The IMC 2005 was organized by Urania, the public observatory of Antwerp. Your comments are very welcome! Lecturers are requested to submit their contribution to the Proceedings before the 15th of October.

From 14 till 17 September 2006, the Meteor Section of the Dutch Association for Meteorology and Astronomy will host the IMC in Roden, a village close to Groningen in the northern part of The Netherlands.

See you next year!

As you can see, the IMO website got a serious facelift. The old design was around since the launch of the site in 1996 and was screaming for some attention.

It finally got this much-needed attention with a complete re-make of the site, now based on the open-source Content Management System Drupal and with a new, simple and clean design. While the old site already had a huge amount of information available it was often hard to find. We tried to move all this information into an easier structure so that everybody can find what he needs.

With the launch of the new website, there's also some new stuff available. Some of the more important things:

• an electronic report form for your visual observations (summary reports)
• IMO Meteor Shower Calendar 2006
• A central place for all data archives. Note the updated VMDB archive.
• An electronic membership registration form and a new who-is-who page, which should be more up-to-date than the old one...

We've put a lot of effort in making this website better, now it's your turn! Please let us know if you have any comments, questions or remarks. If anything seems broken or if you have ideas for improvements, definitely tell us.

The 2005 Perseids exhibited a normal to rather low maximum activity level. There is no clear peak time, but this can still be due to the limited amount of data. For the moment we have to assume that the maximum of the 2005 Perseids was broad, with best rates between Aug 12, 1h and Aug 13, 3h UT reaching a ZHR of about 90.

In the Meteor Shower Calendar 2006, Alastair McBeath looks ahead at what the coming year has to offer for the meteor world. For your convenience the calendar is also available as PDF (282 KB). Traditionally the calendar will be made available in other languages as well. If you want to help with a translation into your own language, you are encouraged to contact the webmaster for details.

A great amount of data has been reported by visual observers already one day after the maximum night. The below activity profile is based on 5511 Geminids seen by 46 observers.

The peak time of the shower is found near Dec 13, 20h UT. The time given in solar longitude (position of Earth on its orbit) is 262.1 degrees which is a bit early in the trend found by Rendtel (WGN 32:2, 2004) suggesting 262.16-262.17 degrees.

However, variations in the steepness of the magnitude distributions (population index) as well as additional data may shift the peak time a bit. These will be studied in future analyses of the 2004 Geminids. It is very promising that already at this early stage of analysis, a detailed profile could be constructed.