The JSCAS expedition got off to a poor start after a bad weather system enveloped Houston on Nov. 12. They flew Atlantic Southeast Airlines from Hobby to Dallas with only a 30 minute connection time to another flight to Portland. Departing Hobby 15 minutes late and going through harrowing thunderstorms, their flight finally made it to Dallas 5 minutes after the Portland flight had departed. Delta Airlines then rerouted them on an American Airlines Dallas-Tokyo flight which would have arrived 3 hours earlier than their original Portland connection. They boarded the American flight only to sit for more than half an hour before the entire plane was evacuated due to a computer malfunction. American switched to another aircraft which finally took off for Japan. The 13 hour 12 minute flight landed with enough time to make the final Tokyo-Beijing segment on United Airlines and at 840pm Nov. 13, they touched down in China. Maley and Palmer were invited by astronomer Jin Zhu to observe from the Beijing Astronomical Observatory at Xinglong, 170km northeast of Beijing on the nights of 15-17 November. Jin met them at the airport and briefed them on upcoming plans on the way to the hotel. Jin does not drive a car and was in fact taking his driver's test that week.

They remained in Beijing for a bit over a day before being transported to the Beijing Astronomical Observatory (BAO) administrative facility on the northwest side of the city. As they were driving, the theme from "Titanic" was playing on the radio. Was it an omen to come? There they met up with some of the other European observers before setting out on the 4 hour drive to the observing site. Arriving in early evening, they shared rather primitive observer quarters at a dormitory with some members of the Dutch Meteor Society. They had hoped for one of the 5 good rooms at the observatory but they were all taken. The resulting accommodations were a short walk from the mess hall and several flights of stairs up to a block of three small rooms. The front door had a lock which was very hard to open. The first day there, as they tried to leave the building, they found the door lock jammed. It took more than 15 minutes of work to nearly break the lock open to get out of the building. Almost as complicated was the actual room lock which had to be slammed to close. None of rooms in the dorm had a bath or shower and those were already committed in other buildings. There was a basic flush toilet with a sink and glacial cold water. The presence of what appeared to be a bed pan beside each bed did not add to the overall enjoyment. However, they were able to get a bar of soap and a small towel big enough to dry a small cat. A window in the bathroom let in the bitterly cold air. Radiators provided heat which operated at unpredictable times. Every sound made in the building could be heard by everyone in it. This was the typical observer conditions at BAO.

The BAO site is 950m above sea level and contains a series of domes and telescopes with telescopes of former east German and Chinese origin ranging from 25cm to 2.16m in aperture. Maley and Palmer spent some time using the incredibly slow internet access in the Schmidt dome but some of the staff would begin to smoke in the control room and that was very difficult to be around. After scouting the facility they obtained permission from Prof. Hu, the senior observatory fellow, to locate their site next to the dome of the 2.16 m telescope. It was amazing that the facility was so open to amateur astronomers and they were extremely pleased by the courtesy; and openness that the Chinese astronomers showed. The Dutch amateurs had been there a week and every night was clear until the JSCAS team arrival. Their first night, Nov. 15 was overcast due to an immense region of clouds which had also caused complete fogging over of the sky during the daylight hours as well. A plan was being readied to fly to another Chinese city if the forecast looked unfavorable for the following two nights. However, they were told it would improve.

On Nov. 16, a cold dry airmass moved in and the sky cleared at sundown. Formal video observations began when the Leonid radiant appeared on the horizon. Temperatures hovered at -10 C degrees most of the night; since Maley and Palmer did not have enough cold weather, they had to periodically go in/out of the building to maintain warmth. Even with ski clothes, gloves and Russian hats, the cold was overpowering at times. They were lucky to find a small anteroom with a heater and enough space to store all their equipment. Maley conducted a dual program. Several two hour long still photos were attempted with a Nikon 8m f/2.8 fish-eye lens and ASA 800 Fuji film. Intensified video was recorded on Hi-8 video tape and with a 24mm f/2 objective lens. Palmer performed visual meteor counts logging Leonids and sporadics. The field of view was constrained to the sky east of the meridian due to blockage by the multi-story telescope building, which was also necessary to serve as a windbreak from strong winds gusting 30-40 knots at times during the night. Limiting magnitude was estimated at +6.0 with the naked eye. Limiting magnitude with the 24mm lens on video was +5.5.

Observations were conducted from 1500 to 2200UT (11pm-6am local time). Activity began to pick up around 1810UT with 3-4 Leonids observed per minute in the eastern half of the sky. Six Leonids per minute were recorded at 2022 and 7/minute at 2038 sustaining through 2118. The average Leonid was +1 with a smoke train that vanished after less than one second. However, there was an impressive display of brilliant fireballs somewhat reminiscent of 1966 except for the much lower rate per unit time this year. At least seven were observed whose trains persisted for 5 minutes or more; some of these were also recorded on video (20 degree field of view) where the motion of the train was evident over time. Some occurred directly behind the dome creating flashes that were seen to illuminate the ground to either the right or left. No meteors produced audible sonic phenomena. The brightest fireball seen was probably -10. Even if one wasn't watching you could hear the shouts of people around the site as they saw one fireball after another. As one flash appeared people would run about to see what was left. Often it was a snake like smoke pattern, sometimes in linear form, othertimes like a semicircle or corkscrew. You could see the upper atmosphere winds at 100km distorting the trails slowly with time.

One thing that was noted was a near complete absence of Leonids fainter than +3. Video recording had to be terminated at 2145 due to impending twilight, but one observer stayed up to see the last fireball actually spotted right at local sunrise time at 2300UT! Several flying pairs of Leonids were spotted during the night; these were characterized by two meteors of about the same brilliance occurring within seconds of one another in nearly the same place in the sky. One flying pair was captured on video. The fish eye lens was located about 200 m from the dome in an open area precariously perched on a ridge to record the whole sky.

After this all night vigil they obtained a few hours sleep before lunch at 1200 noon. The observatory provided 3 meals a day which, though simple, were very tasty. Usually there were about 40 people eating at one time, mostly Chinese. Prices of the meals ranged from .6 to 3Yuan which amounts from 7 to 36 cents. Any movement outside in the open was very difficult because of bone chilling cold so it was a tough decision to leave the dorm just to eat a meal. But one could get Coca-Cola, bottled water, rice, vegetables, sometimes fish and always meat dishes. The chefs were great and often came out to see if their foreign guests were happy with the food. Though communication was impossible except through our English speaking hosts, there was a general level of their understanding as to how much we appreciated a hot meal.

Since all of Maley's equipment was battery powered, it was necessary to perform hours of recharging during the daylight hours. A 20-hour gel cell battery bought in Austin performed extremely well even under cold conditions. A simple transformer allowed the 220V 50cycle power to be converted to 110V 60 cycle. Lithium batteries for the Sony camcorder also worked well and a new 12-hour battery really saved the day. One result of the cold was that an immediate reduction in battery power of about 30% from the fully charged level occurred as the battery was switched on. Even so there was enough reserve to cover the 7 hours of operating time each night before recharging.

On November 17, over two hundred journalists and invited guests descended on the mountain, a 3-4 hour drive from Beijing. It was even worse at the other site located about 75 miles away. There some 5,000 observers and the general public were expected. At Xinglong, the foreign observers were formally introduced to the press followed by a question/answer session. The Dutch observers had two teams totaling 18 observers at two sites and had developed a very thorough program of multi-camera stations and video. They occupied a large open site which is later scheduled to be the location of a new 4m telescope. Maley and Palmer once again based their equipment in the 2.16m dome. Late that afternoon amateur astronomers Steve Edberg from JPL and renowned comet observer Charles Morris arrived and observed near them. Anticipation was quite high that this night was going to produce a great meteor display based on the preview seen the night before. There was an announced rule that no white lights would be permitted beginning 1.5 hours before the meteor watch, yet there were careless people violating the law. Two guards walked down the steps and upon seeing Maley and Palmer lit up a cigarette lighter for illumination purposes. After being yelled at they never appeared again. Even the Dutch observers used white lights to change out their film but fortunately they were positioned several hundred meters away.

Observations again were conducted between 1500 and 2200 UT with temperatures dropping to -13C with some wind. A complete lack of reception of time signals on 5, 10, 15Mhz was noted. Conditions were even more difficult on this night with visibility slightly reduced to a limiting magnitude of +5.5. The cold made it impossible to stay out for more than 15 minutes at a time. The number of meteors was considerably lower than the previous night and the typical Leonid was again +1. From 1630-1640 UT only 2 Leonids and 2 sporadics were seen. Based on this initial watch, the prospects for a storm began to look very grim. At 1801UT there were three Leonids seen in one minute but for the prior 10 minute period, none were seen. In an 8 minute period beginning at 1900UT only 5 Leonids were spotted. But this time there were more meteors observed at the +4 magnitude level and fainter. At about 2002UT the rates picked up to 4-6 per minute in the eastern half of sky and remained at that level for 3/4 hour before dropping back to 2-3/minute. On this night there was a near complete absence of the spectacular brilliant fireballs seen on Nov. 16. One 'flying pair' was recorded on video tape. Because of a problem with the 24mm lens, the fish eye lens was attached to the video to cover a field about 75 degrees wide with a limiting magnitude of +4. This proved to give a very outstanding field of view. Of course, one never new where/when a meteor would appear. The setup only detected meteors of +2 or brighter. The resulting distribution of meteor brightnesses was logged by Lynn Palmer on both nights and is an accurate representation of the different types of meteors that were seen. This had been one of the principal objectives of the expedition. As sunrise drew near, their observations terminated. A tiny thin crescent moon signaled the impending sunrise and everyone on the mountain began the process of packing up. After turdging back to the Schmidt telescope dome a number of cars were stalled out in the cold blocking the single lane observatory roadway.

Maley and Palmer had luckily arranged a ride back to Beijing with two friends of one of the astronomers and in 2.5 hours were back in the city. Much of that ride was spent dozing due to lack of sleep over the past two days. Fortunately the driver had been sleeping most of the night through the meteor shower. Because of horrendous traffic it took another hour to get to the Holiday Inn Hotel. Skies were clear in Beijing and for the first time in three days they had access to a shower and actual central heat. That day a brief account of the JSCAS observations were mentioned in the newspaper CHINA DAILY. Reading through some of the newspaper accounts they learned that four deaths were attributed to the meteor shower and these occurred in Japan. Sendai police reported that an 18 year old driver turned into the path of an approaching car driven by a 24 year old on a prefecture road at 3:25am. Two people died in the crash as one driver was distracted by the shooting stars. In Kiyokawa a 19 year old woman was killed when she fell off a bridge railing while trying to retrieve her shawl blown away by the wind during the meteor watch. Southeast of Tokyo a 73 year old man was knocked down and killed by a truck whose driver was staring upward at the Leonids. Tokyo police also recorded 181 nuisance complaints of noise caused by crowds of skywatchers. Hong Kong police reported more than 30,000 people flocked to the beaches, hills and other vantage points to watch for meteors. In northern Thailand tens of thousands of tourists swarmed to Doi Inthanon, Thailand's highest peak at 2565 meters. However, clouds and lightning hindered the viewing. In Mongolia a USAF observation site was hampered by an accident that knocked out the satellite phone at their site 50 km from Ulaan Bataar, and a fire destroyed one of the camp's three tents. But even there, Leonid counts were about 150-200 per hour, a far cry from the thousands per hour predicted to occur.

Photo results: three exposures were taken on ASA 800 film which resulted in the entire sky being recorded. There was a visual tendency to see many bright fireballs near the horizon. The photos showed this to be true. While it is not clear the minimum magnitude needed to record on this setup it is believed that a -1 or brighter fireball would be recorded. All three pictures were shot on 16 November. The first frame was 2 hours long from 1530-1730UT and only 2 fireballs were recorded. From 1731-1953, 12 fireballs were logged. Finally, from 1953-2138, there were 36 fireballs present.

Video results: a total of 7 two hour long Hi-8 mm tapes were shot using an image intensifier and recorded on a Sony camcorder using a Supercircuits CCD camera. The tapes were shot during the following intervals:

11/16/98 
lens:24mmf/2 
                  time        #Meteors on tape

     Tape #1  1515-1740UT     0 

     Tape #2  1740-1940UT     3 + one train

     Tape #3  1940-2140UT     5 + 4 train remnants



11/17/98 
lens:8mmf/2.8    
                     time       #Meteors on tape

      Tape #4    1515-1715UT    7

      Tape #5    1715-1915UT    1

      Tape #6    1915-2115UT    8

      Tape #7    2115-2145UT    2

Maley had also made arrangements to feed some of his video to the ABC News facility in Beijing and this was successfully sent. Part of an agreement with the Chinese was to have the official Chinese TV station rebroadcast some of the JSCAS expedition video. One of Maley's tapes showing some prominent Leonid fireballs was borrowed by the TV outlet and was shown at 10pm that night to Chinese audiences. On Nov. 19 the JSCAS expedition returned to Houston after 4 flights totaling about 18 hours. Some of this same video was then shown on the Discovery Channel back in the US on Nov. 20.