Tuesday, November 17, 2009
THE LEONID METEOR SHOWER!!!!
So who wants to come join me and watch :) Don’t miss out on this chance! Besides, who doesn’t wanna see a shooting star? ;)
The Leonid meteor shower (3 guesses on what constellation it’s named after :P) occurs once every 33 years from about 14 to 20 November as the Earth passes through an old debris stream left by past passages of the comet Temple-Tuttle. The Leonids are fast meteors that enter Earth's atmosphere at speeds of over 250,000 km per hour and leave lots of trains and often contain a large number of very bright meteors, whose trains can last for several minutes.
The best time to look for these Leonid meteors is 3–5am (though it techniquelly can happen any time after midnight) on the morning of the 18th (AKA VERY SOON!!!!) So for us Eastern states, you should look North East at about 45 degrees up into the dark sky. The peak will eventuate at about 3-4:00AM for Victorians :) But as you can’t rush the universe, it’s estimated that only ten to a dozen or so come every hour,(thank you maths, you’ve finally came in handy :P) that you’ll so that means you’ll have to wait on average 6 minutes between each meteor. That said, the advantage is they’re all coming from the same region of sky, which means you can just lie back and watch. ^^ So rug up, do something new and see something that is simply remarkable.
