Up next for end-of-year celestial spectaculars is the Leonid meteor shower, set to produce bright meteors with persistent trains streaking across the night sky. <\/p>\n
The Leonids have been active since early November but are expected to peak this weekend at 12:33 a.m. ET Saturday,\u00a0according to EarthSky. Sky-gazers could see 10 to 15 meteors per hour in a dazzling display. <\/p>\n
Those looking to catch a glimpse of a meteor from this shower are in luck because the moon will be in its waxing crescent phase, and there will not be as much light interference as there is with a full moon, said\u00a0Dr. Sharon Morsink,\u00a0a professor of physics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta. The moon will be 23% full on the night of the shower\u2019s peak, according to the\u00a0American Meteor Society. <\/p>\n
While the peak is on Saturday, the same rates of meteors can be seen a few days before and afterward. The best time to view the shower will be after midnight in any time zone when the constellation Leo will be the highest in the sky, said Morsink, who also manages the university\u2019s\u00a0astronomical observatory. Leo is the meteor shower\u2019s radiant, which is the point where the phenomenon appears to originate from, she explained. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe most important thing is to get away from light pollution,\u201d Morsink said. \u201cYou can still see some meteors if you\u2019re in the city, but you\u2019re not going to see anywhere near the number that you get to see if you get out of the city.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Leonids are famed for generating meteor storms, the term used when a shower reaches rates of at least 1,000 meteors per hour,\u00a0according to NASA. <\/p>\n
Holding the record for the highest rate of meteors per hour seen in a meteor stream, the Leonids produced 144,000 meteors per hour in 1966, according to\u00a0the American Meteor Society. The shower also produced outbursts of higher rates in 1999 and 2001, but the society does not expect another storm until 2099, when the Earth is predicted to encounter a dense cloud of debris from the parent comet, Tempel-Tuttle. <\/p>\n
As the comet travels around the sun, it leaves a trail of rocks and dust that appears as the annual Leonid meteor shower when Earth moves through the debris while on its own orbital path. <\/p>\n
Although a Leonid storm event is not predicted for this year, there is always a chance to see a few more meteors than the predicted rate, Morsink said. <\/p>\n
\u201cGetting out and seeing any meteor shower for the first time is always fun,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s just this interesting connection that we have with the whole solar system \u2014 here\u2019s this comet that is far away from us that has been circling the sun for an incredibly long period, billions of years probably. \u2026 It\u2019s a way for us to connect with things that are really far away.\u201d <\/p>\n
Meteors from the\u00a0Leonids\u00a0are expected to be seen blazing in the sky until the shower\u2019s finality on December 2, according to the\u00a0American Meteor Society. If you are eager to see more, here are the\u00a0remaining meteor showers\u00a0that peak in 2023: <\/p>\n
\u25cf Geminids: December 13-14 <\/p>\n
\u25cf Ursids: December 21-22 <\/p>\n
There are two full moons remaining in 2023,\u00a0according to the Farmers\u2019 Almanac: <\/p>\n
\u25cf November 27: Beaver moon <\/p>\n
\u25cf December 26: Cold moon <\/p>\n\n
Up next for end-of-year celestial spectaculars is the Leonid meteor shower, set to produce bright meteors with persistent trains streaking across the night sky. The Leonids have been active since early November but are expected to peak this weekend at 12:33 a.m. ET Saturday,\u00a0according to EarthSky. Sky-gazers could see 10 to 15 meteors per hour <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11758,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11757","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}