Meteor Shower May Be Visible Locally
CHICAGO (WBBM) - The best viewing for the Leonid meteor shower this year will be in the two to three hours before dawn on Wednesday and Thursday, according to the editors of StarDate magazine.
There is always some uncertainty in the number of meteors the Leonid shower will produce, but viewers should expect to see at least 20 meteors per hour if they have clear skies.
In Chicago, a chance of showers could ruin the shower.
At dawn on Wednesday, the forecast calls for partly cloudy to cloudy skies. On Thursday morning, rain is possible under cloudy skies. So, the best be might be Wednesday. And, who knows, maybe the clouds will cooperate.
NOTE: Dawn in generally referred to as the beginning of the twilight before sunrise. The sun rises locally at about 6:40 a.m. C.T. The best time for viewing this shower should be from about 3 a.m. C.T. until sunrise in the Eastern sky, according to the magazine.
The nearly full Moon will set several hours before dawn, and therefore not wash out any meteors in the hours immediately before dawn.
For your best view, get away from city lights and be looking East. Look for state or city parks or other safe, dark sites. Lie on a blanket or reclining chair to get a full-sky view. If you can see all of the stars in the Little Dipper, you have good dark-adapted vision.
Leonid meteors appear to fall from the constellation Leo, the lion, but they are not associated with it. They are leftover debris from comet Tempel-Tuttle. As the comet orbits the Sun, it leaves a trail of debris. The Leonid meteors recur each year when Earth passes through the comet's debris trail.
Each time comet Tempel-Tuttle gets closest to the Sun in its orbit, called "perihelion," it sheds a significant amount of material. This creates clumps along its orbit. If Earth passes through one of these clumps this year, viewers could see hundreds of meteors per hour at the shower's peak. If Earth simply passes through the "normal" part of the comet's debris trail, the number of meteors visible will be much lower.
Published bi-monthly by The University of Texas at Austin McDonald Observatory, StarDate magazine provides readers with skywatching tips, skymaps, beautiful astronomical photos, astronomy news and features, and a 32-page Sky Almanac each January.
