Wide-Field Video Observation and Statistical Analysis of the Leonid Meteor Storm in 2001

Abstract

Abstract We show a detailed analysis of a wide-field video observation of the Leonid Meteor Storm from ${14{}^{\mathrm {h}}41{}^{\mathrm {m}}}$ through ${20{}^{\mathrm {h}}03{}^{\mathrm {m}}}$ (UT) on 2001 November 18. We detected 1573 meteors of Leonids and 64 meteors of others. The peak of the storm appeared at ${18{}^{\mathrm {h}}20{}^{\mathrm {m}}}$ and its duration was 1.9 hr (FWHM). Bright ($m\leq2.5$) and faint ($m \geq 2.5$) meteors showed significantly different behavior in their activity. Especially, after ${19{}^{\mathrm {h}}15{}^{\mathrm {m}}}$, bright objects dominated the meteor events. We found many local peaks in the count record, and most of local peaks consisted of faint meteors. The autocorrelation function and the interval distribution between the meteor arrivals suggest that the distribution of dust in the cometary trails has no significant spatial structures that give rise to a temporally coherent behavior with a time-scale of seconds to minutes.