Leonid meteor shower: How and when to view the peak

Sky-gazers worldwide might get the probability to see a celestial show this week as the annual Leonid meteor bathe reaches its peak.

The Leonids are set to peak at 1 p.m. ET Monday, in accordance to EarthSky. You might begin glimpsing meteors at 11 p.m. Sunday native time, which is when the constellation Leo rises over the horizon. But it’s greatest to look ahead to them between 4 a.m. Monday and dawn native time, stated Robert Lunsford, fireball report coordinator for the American Meteor Society.

“Unlike a lot of (meteor) showers, the Leonids have a very sharp peak,” Lunsford stated, including there is just one good evening for viewing.

The Leonids’ dad or mum comet, 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, is to thank for this temporary length. The dimension of the comet’s particles path is small, so Earth passes via it for a brief period of time.

The meteors you’ll see round 11 p.m. Sunday can be Earth grazers, Lunsford stated, which implies they’ll last more than regular and will shoot throughout a big portion of the sky. “But you won’t see as many because a lot of the Leonid activity will be shooting downward below the horizon,” he added.

Under clear climate situations, you may count on to see 10 to 15 meteors per hour.

Showers and storms

While a meteor bathe is predicted this yr, the Leonids are identified for often producing large meteor storms, with at the very least 1,000 meteors per hour.

The final Leonid meteor storm was in 2002. However, certainly one of the most memorable storms occurred in 1966 when “we passed right through the center of one of the Leonid streams and rates were estimated at 40 meteors per second,” Lunsford stated.

That storm had meteor exercise so prevalent in the sky that meteors appeared to fall like rain.

High meteor exercise coincides with when the comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle reaches perihelion — its closest method in orbit to the solar. It takes the comet 33 years to orbit the solar, so the bigger Leonid meteor showers — and typically storms — have a tendency to happen about each 33 years.

For a storm to occur, Earth has to move via a dense a part of the comet’s particles throughout perihelion, however typically our planet solely skims the outskirts.

The subsequent bathe that can coincide with the comet’s orbital cycle will happen in 2033, however it isn’t anticipated to be a storm, Lunsford stated. “We may see rates of around 100 an hour, which is comparable to the Geminids,” he stated, “but we certainly don’t expect any storms which are 1,000 meters an hour.”

Here are the peak dates of the two remaining meteor showers anticipated this yr, in accordance to the American Meteor Society and EarthSky.