Leonids are bits of debris from Comet Tempel-Tuttle. Every 33 years the comet visits the inner solar system and leaves a stream of dusty debris in its wake. Many of these streams have drifted across the November portion of Earth's orbit. Whenever we hit one, meteors come flying out of the constellation Leo. The first stream crossing on Nov. 17th comes around 4am EST. The debris is a diffuse mix of particles from several old streams that should produce a gentle display of two or three dozen meteors per hour over North America. A remarkable feature of this year's shower is that the Leonids will appear to be shooting almost directly out of Mars. It's just a coincidence, this year, that Mars happens to be passing by the Leonid radiant at the time of the shower. The red planet is almost as twice as bright as a first magnitude star, so it makes an eye-catching companion for the Leonids.
Amber, Tawny, Nathaniel, and I drove out to the Blue Ridge Pkwy to view the meteor shower ontop of Raven's Roost in hopes that the Mtns would break through the cloud cover. It was perfect up there and we did have an amazing view of the night sky with the new moon(no moon) I saw about 6 faint meteors and 5 "holy cows"
We were viewing the shower from 3:30am-4:30am arriving back in RVA at 6am.
Meteor showers, Astronomy, and the Universe all remind me of how insignificant we are on this little blue planet, however at the same time the overall chances of our existence here now is a million to one and that is very significant. For a moment Life was put into perspectives that faded away on the drive home...
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