The 1999 Leonid meteor storm: verification of rapid activity variations byobservations at three sites

We report observations of an unpredicted fine structure in the activity pro file of the Leonid meteor storm of 1999 November 18. Our observations were obtained at three widely separated sites (on the Iberian peninsula, in Germ any, and in northern Sweden) and with two totally different techniques (vid eo cameras and meteor radars). The observations clearly show quasi-periodic variations of the meteor rate with temporal separations of individual maxi ma in the 6- to 9-min range. These temporal variations translate into spati al variations within the dust trail with scales between 10 000 and 30 000 k m, depending in which reference frame or direction one chooses to compare. The times for the central three maxima as observed at the three sites agree within 2 min of each other after application of the appropriate topocentri c time corrections. We consider a number of potential causes for the observ ed density variations within the meteor stream.