Leonid Meteor Shower / RedOrbit
This year's Leonid Meteor shower is expected to peak on Tuesday, November 17th. The shower is expected to be small, but should produce a sprinkling of meteors over the United States. Because the moon will also be in the new phase, this could be the best Leonid shower in several years.
Although NASA is able to fairly accurately predict when Earth will cross a debris stream, it isn't always as easy to tell the intensity of the display, as they don't know how much debris is in each stream.
"We're predicting 20 to 30 meteors per hour over the Americas, and as many as 200 to 300 per hour over Asia," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "Our forecast is in good accord with independent theoretical work by other astronomers."
The first stream is expected to be seen at about 4 am Eastern Time.
"A remarkable feature of this year's shower is that Leonids will appear to be shooting almost directly out of the plant Mars," says Cooke.
Along with the moon being in the new phase, Mars also happens to be passing by the Leonid radiant at the same time of the shower, making this shower especially visually appealing.
For more information, see: RedOrbit: The 2009 Leonid Meteor Shower
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Comments
This is going to be beautfiul. Worth waking up early for!
This will be amazing. Seems we've had a lot of showers lately!
I live up in northern Minnesota, there is little light pollution here and every year I have had an amazing view of the leonids showers! I decided to setup a couple cameras with live feeds to share my view with others. If you’re interested you can check it out at my website here: www.tinyurl.com/watch-leonid-meteor-live
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