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Great news for skywatchers everywhere! The Leonid meteor shower will take place tomorrow, Tuesday, November 18. The amazing astronomical event will have the night sky filled with shooting stars in a meteor rain.
These meteor storms happened in 1833 and 1966 when thousands of falling stars were observed light up the sky. Other Leonid meteor shower happened in more recent times, in 1999, 2001 and 2002, but at these events there were only a couple of thousands meteors per hour were visible.
The 2014 Leonid meteor shower will not be very spectacular, experts say, and we won’t be able to see many meteors falling from the skies. Astronomers say that there will be long periods of time when not one single meteor will be seen.
If tomorrow will be a bad weather, or if you won’t be able to see the Leonid meteor shower clearly because of the air pollution, you can catch the astronomical event online. NASA and Slooh Community Observatory will webcast it for free in two sessions.
The webcast on Slooh.com will start at 8 p.m. EST and you will be able to see the night sky through the observatory’s telescope in Prescott, Arizona and the Canary Islands.
NASA will broadcast the Leonid meteor shower starting with 7:30 p.m. EST and you will be able to see the event through the telescope view from Alabama, where NASA has the Marshall Space Flight Center.
If you want to watch the Leonid meteor shower from outside, you just need to lie back and look at the sky. You need to be somewhere where nothing like tall trees or tall buildings can obstruct your view of the night sky.
The best time to see the Leonids is around after midnight because that is when the constellation Leo will start appearing.
The Leonid meteor shower became famous in the 17th century and in 1833 more than 100,000 meteors per hours could be seen on the night sky. Although the 2014 Leonids will not be as spectacular as past Leonids, it will sure worth seeing it.
