The Leonid meteor shower and other great space sites

The Leonids are not a new species of Lions but a meteor shower that occurs every year in mid November. These meteors are the debris of a comet that orbits the sun every 33 years. This year the earth passes through the trail of debris left by the comet for the first time since it passed through the inner solar system earlier this year so the prediction is that this years Leonid shower could be very impressive. On the other hand next year could be a really good year, no one knows for sure. That's the good news. The bad news is that the prediction is that the earth will pass through the most dense area of the comet tail stuff when in the middle of the day for North America, if you live in Japan or Thailand then you could see a very impressive meteor shower. Don't worry about a meteor falling on your head, these meteors are very, very small, most aren't any bigger than a dust grain and they will all burn up in the upper atmosphere.

You can find some really good articles about this upcoming event at Sky and Telescope - Leonids:The Celestial Lottery. Sky and Telescope refers to them as the celestial lottery because seeing a really good display is a bit like winning the lottery, pretty rare. To win this lottery no ticket is required. Sky and Telescope also has a nice night sky sights page which is updated weekly. This page shows you the highlights of the night sky and updates you on the location of all the planets.

NASA's Leonid '98 Meteor Outburst page has more information and links about this possibly impressive celestial event. As I mentioned above there is a better chance that the meteor shower will be more impressive in the far east so if you want to check them out on the other side of the world both Live Leonids '98 and chiangmainews.com are offering live webcasts on the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth of November for chiangmainews.com and the seventeenth for Live Leonids.

To finish off I thought I'd throw in two general purpose astronomy sites just in case the meteor shower doesn't live up to expectations. Both The Space Place and StarChild: A learning center for young astronomers are great sites to get started on learning about the sky above.

Well that's it for this week, sorry for being late. See you next week.

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