Don’t miss your chance to see one of the best free shows in the sky this year – the Leonids will peak on 17 November. Meteors are produced when tiny pieces of dust shed by comets many years ago plummet through the Earth’s atmosphere. They fall so fast that friction with the air heats them up and they “light up” appearing as “shooting stars.” A few meteors fall each hour on every night of the year, but it’s only when the Earth passes near the orbit of an active comet that meteors fall by the dozens as a shower.
The Leonids is one of the better meteor showers to observe, producing an average of 40 meteors per hour at their peak. The shower itself has a cyclic peak year every 33 years where hundreds of meteors can be seen each hour. The last of these occurred in 2001. The shower peaks this year on 17 and 18 November, but you can usually see some meteors from 13 – 20 November. The moon will be totally out of the way this year, providing an exceptional viewing experience for the Leonids.
The best time to observe is clearly dependent upon where you live on the globe.