News
No 2022 Leonid outburst detected
Apart from the nodal crossing ("regular maximum") on Nov 17, 23UT, there were predictions of several possible additional dust trail encounters for the Leonids meteor shower in 2022.

Figure 1- A -5 magnitude Leonid in Canis Major followed by a 1-minute duration train captured by Jürgen Rendtel on November 19th, 2022, 05h 47min UT, from Tenerife Observatory. This confirmed meteor observer did not notice any meteoric activity increase at the end of night, when a predicted outburst was in approach. Credit: Jürgen Rendtel
The first possible rate enhancement was calculated for Nov 18, 07 UT. The currently available visual data give no hint at a rate increase (Figure 2). At a first glance, this seems also to be the case for Nov 19, 06h00-06h30 UT. At least no outburst. "During my own observing session from the Observatorio del Teide at Tenerife I noticed several bright Leonids between 0520 and 0555 UT. Two LEO had -4 mag, one -5 mag (Figure 1) with a 1-min-train. At the location, the morning twilight effectively ends the sessions at 0630UT, and the Leonids in the last half hour (covering the possible encounter period) did not indicate a rate rise", explains Jürgen Rendtel. Note that the portion of bright Leonids hints at a lower population index, hence the ZHR and the flux was not enhanced.

Figure 2- No Leonid outbursts are featured on the 2022 activity profile of this famous meteor shower. Credit: IMO
Today (Nov 23) Mikhail Maslov added: "The computed 1733 trail was composed of particles with high negative ejection velocities [...]. It seems that [...] especially smaller ones [...] are blown away by solar radiation pressure and only a very small amount of larger particles could remain, and the brighter Leonid meteors you observed could be produced by those scarce larger particles."