This year the Leonid meteor shower is forecast to be active over the period 6 – 30 November, with a peak in activity at 1.40 pm AEST on Friday 18 November 2011. Detailed information on why the peak is forecast to occur at this time can be found here. Few meteors are expected to be visible from the Leonids due to the presence of a bright Moon in the morning sky – even if you are lucky enough to be on part of the Earth where it happens to be night. If the forecast holds true, that won’t be Australia.
As with any meteor shower, we are observing small particles of dust (referred to as a meteoroid) impacting the Earth’s upper atmosphere at great speed. This heats the atmosphere surrounding the meteoroid to the extend that it glows. This produces what we Earth bound observers refer to as a meteor. The dust which produces the Leonid meteor shower was released by Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle on it’s many previous visits through the inner solar system (it last visited in 1998). The dust impacts the atmosphere at 255,600 kilometers per hour. As a point of interest, meteors have been seen by astronauts above the Earth’s atmosphere and by satellites.
