If you brave the chilly November air and head somewhere dark tonight, you should get an enjoyable show: the Leonid meteor shower at its peak. But if you live in a city with a lot of light pollution, or you’d just rather stay in the warm comfort of your pajamas, you can watch a live online show (above) from The Slooh Community Observatory starting today at 5:00 p.m. PST/8:00 p.m. EST.
Wherever you are, the best time to view the meteor shower with your naked eye is between midnight and dawn (local time). The Slooh Space Camera will start its broadcast from its observatory in the Canary Islands off the coast of northwestern Africa, and move to the Prescott Observatory in Arizona later in the evening. During the broadcast, you might even have the chance to hear the meteors.
No, meteors don’t really make sounds, but when they zoom through the atmosphere, they strip electrons off the atoms in the air, leaving behind a trail of ionized particles. Ambient radio waves being broadcast into the sky can hit these ionized particles and bounce back toward the ground. Slooh is partnering with SpaceWeatherRadio in New Mexico to catch these reflected radio signals and convert them into audio, producing a haunting, high-pitched hum.
In the past, the Leonids have provided some spectacular shows, such as a meteor storm in 1833 that produced 100,000 meteors per hour. This year, however, the prediction is that there will only be about 10 to 15 meteors per hour.
Meteor showers happen when Earth’s orbit takes us through the trail of debris that follows a comet. In the case of the Leonids, the comet is Tempel-Tuttle, which orbits the sun every 33 years. As the comet orbits the sun, it leaves behind dust and detritus in its path, and when the Earth passes through this cometary litter, the particles burn up in the atmosphere, producing streaking lights in the sky that we see as shooting stars. In the same way that snowflakes appear to originate from a point straight ahead as you drive through a snowstorm, meteors appear to come from a single point in the sky.
Tonight’s meteor shower will be centered on the constellation Leo—hence the name the Leonids—which will be in the east after midnight. But you will be able to see meteors anywhere in the sky, as long as it’s dark and the weather’s clear. We see the Leonids every November when Earth passes through a particular point in its orbit.
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