Leonid Meteor Shower

What is the Leonid Meteor Shower?

  • The Leonids emerge from the comet Tempel-Tuttle, which requires 33 years to revolve once around the Sun. These meteors are bright and among the fastest moving– travelling at speeds of 71 km per second.

  • Meteor showers are named after the constellation they appear to be coming from. 

    • The Leonids originate from the constellation Leo the Lion– the groups of stars which form a lion’s mane.

Meteors

  • A meteor is a space rock—or meteoroid—that enters Earth's atmosphere. As the space rock falls toward Earth, the resistance—or drag—of the air on the rock makes it extremely hot.

  • What we see is a "shooting star." That bright streak is not actually the rock, but rather the glowing hot air as the hot rock zips through the atmosphere.

  • When Earth encounters many meteoroids at once, we call it a meteor shower.

What is a Meteor Shower?

  • On its journey around the Sun, the Earth passes through large swathes of cosmic debris. 

    • The debris is essentially the remnants of comets

  • These chunks of matter that leave behind dirty trails of rocks and ice that linger long after the comets themselves have passed. As the Earth wades through this cloud of comet waste, the bits of debris create what appears from the ground to be a fireworks display in the sky — known as a meteor shower.

How to see a Meteor Shower?

  • Meteors are best seen on a cloudless night, when the entire sky is visible, and when the Moon is not extremely bright. 

  • Chances of a successful viewing are higher from locations far away from the lights of cities. 

  • The showers peak when the Earth passes through the densest part of the debris cloud. 

    • Peaks can last for a few hours or several nights. They tend to be most visible after midnight and before dawn. 

    • The showers should be seen with naked eyes; binoculars and telescopes narrow the field of vision.

  • The Leonids will be most visible in the Northern Hemisphere, but can also be seen from the Southern Hemisphere. India lies in the Northern Hemisphere.

Why would Earth encounter many meteoroids at once? 

  • Well, comets, like Earth and the other planets, also orbit the sun.

    • Unlike the nearly circular orbits of the planets, the orbits of comets are usually quite lop-sided.

  • As a comet gets closer to the sun, some of its icy surface boils off, releasing lots of particles of dust and rock. This comet debris gets strewn out along the comet's path, especially in the inner solar system (where we live) as the sun's heat boils off more and more ice and debris.

  • Each year as the Earth makes its journey around the sun several times, its orbit crosses the orbit of a comet, which means Earth smacks into a bunch of comet debris

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