Overview
- The Leonid shower is predicted to reach its maximum on Tuesday, Nov. 17 at about 6:45 p.m. EST, and under ideal dark-sky conditions observers can expect a Zenithal Hourly Rate near 10–15 meteors per hour.
- The best viewing window is between midnight and dawn on the nights around Nov. 17–18 with North America favored in the early hours of Nov. 17 and Nov. 18 and Europe best placed in the early hours of Nov. 18.
- The meteors come from debris left by comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, a roughly 3.6 km nucleus that returns about every 33 years and is next expected near the Sun in 2031.
- Leonid meteors hit the atmosphere at about 71 km per second, which makes them fast and capable of producing bright fireballs and long glowing trails, and the shower has produced rare storm-level displays in 1833 and 1966 when Earth crossed dense dust trails.
- To improve your chances find a dark site away from city lights, give your eyes 20–30 minutes to adapt, lie back and watch a wide patch of sky, and note that some forecasters expect stronger, but uncertain, activity when the comet and its fresh dust return in the early 2030s.