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The annual Leonid meteor shower, which will peak overnight from Saturday, November 17, into Sunday, November 18, has been known to produce some of the most explosive meteor storms. In some years observers have noted as many as 50,000 meteors per hour.
But, 2018 is not one of those years. The American Meteor Society expects this year’s rate to be about 15 meteors per year, and a bright, waxing gibbous moon just 6 days ahead of full moon will blot out many of those.
Although that rather subdued shower will begin earlier in the night, just before dawn – at 3 a.m. or so – is usually the best time for skywatching during the Leonid peak, according to Jane Houston Jones at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The Leonid meteors appear to originate in the constellation Leo, but meteor-watching really is a matter of looking up into the sky, which affords the best chance of spotting meteors with longer tails.
The meteors are bits of debris left behind by Comet Tempel-Tuttle, which completes an orbit around the sun every 33.3 years. Earth passes through that debris trail each November, giving us the Leonid shower.
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