While they will be seen in all quadrants of the night sky, they will appear to originate near the constellation of Leo, a very lion-looking group of stars that will be rising in the east about midnight local time on those dates.

Mark your calendars, and watch the sky!

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Anakin
[monger=ff0000,ffffff]Holonet Jedi Master[/monger]
Forum Administrator

I assume by that comment you enjoy meteor showers, oh bounty hunter! *chuckles* A lil more info is in order:

Comet Tempel-Tuttle, as is most comets, is slowly being disintegrated. Comets have been referred to as "dirty snowballs," being made of leftover material from the formation of our solar system, which is sort of "glued together" by frozen gases. Cometary bodies exist in a large, spherical cloud that surrounds our solar system, which is called the Oort Cloud. Every so often, gravitational disturbances alter the orbit of one of these bodies, and they are sent inward toward the sun. (There is also another cometary band nearer to Pluto called the Kuiper Belt)

As they approach the Sun, the frozen ices warm, sublimating to a gas. The rocky materials are loosened, which stream out behind the comet forming a dust tail. This dust tail kind of bends toward the Sun, attracted by gravity. Another tail, the glowing ion tail, also develops, which is held directly away from the sun. This one forms as the atoms of the sublimated gases are ionized by the solar wind, and excited by energy provided them by that solar wind. This tail glows a beautiful blue.

So, to see a comet, is to see a glowing nucleus, or head, with two tails attached to it: one the dust tail, always bending to the sun; the other, the ion tail, always pointing straight away from the sun. Here is a picture of Comet Hale-Bopp, showing the white dust tail and the blue ion tail:

Anyway, as the comet travels, the dust tail eventually separates from the comet's head, and remains in a "blob" in it's own orbit around the sun. Since the orbit of the original comet is not exactly the same each passage (because it gets "nudged" a bit by the tremendous gravitational attraction of Jupiter), these dust "blobs" are laid down in different places each time.

Our orbit varies a bit as well. So each year, while we look forward to the Leonid (and other) Meteor shower, knowing we will be passing through parts of Comet Tempel-Tuttle's old dust trails, we were never certain as to what part of what dust trail. Thus sometimes we go through a dust trail near its edge: the meteor shower is smaller. Sometimes we pass through the middle, where the material is dense. We then get treated to a spectacular show.

Astronomers have been searching out these dust trails, and determining their orbits in relationship to ours. They have improved their tactics greatly. We know that this year we are passing through two dust trail remnants, although somewhat near their outer edges. It is speculated the meteor shower will average 200-700 meteors per hour.

Next year and the year following (2001 and 2002) will be much better. Orbits have already been projected: we know that in November of that year we will be passing smack through the middle of two of the dust trails, which are pretty dense. We ought to see a meteor shower with an average of 1500 or so per hour!

In the meantime, we will still have a good show next month!

Watch the Sky!