Last Leonid Show of Nearly a Century

Nov. 18, 2002 -- Late tonight and early tomorrow morning, a collision between Earth's atmosphere and a cluster of comet debris will produce a flurry of shooting stars that won't be matched for nearly a century.

If news of the Leonid meteor shower sounds familiar, that's because Earth also brushed through the debris of comet Tempel-Tuttle last year, making it a dazzling night for stargazing as the dust bits burned up in the atmosphere in bright flares.

It's unusual that Earth passes through enough clumps of dust to produce a good storm two years in a row — usually it misses or passes through gaps in the dust cluster — but calculations show we're heading for an even denser clod this year than last year.

And it will be the last big Leonid storm for a long time. Carefully plotted charts of the comet's trail and Earth's projectory show there won't be another significant Leonid meteor shower until 2099.

There's just one problem: A full moon will brighten the backdrop and diminish the storm's splendor.

Avoiding Moonlight

"The rates of falling stars will probably be higher than last year, but with the full moon the 'wow' effect may be comparable to last year," said Peter Brown, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Western Ontario.

Peter Jenniskens, an astronomer with the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center NASA, is optimistic the moon won't sour the display. He says the showers this year are going to be three times heavier than last year's and so even if the moon obscures half the meteor streaks, it will still be better than the 2001 showers.

"Just don't look at the moon," Jenniskens advises. "It will be low in the sky anyway so just try and keep it out of your view by blocking it with a tree or your house."

The Leonid's are named after the constellation, Leo, where most of the shooting stars appear to originate in the night sky. Earliest accounts of the meteor shower date to the beginning of the 10th century when reports described a night when the "stars fell like rain," according to amateur astronomer Gary Kronk. He says similar descriptions surfaced for the next several centuries at roughly 33-year intervals in written records of Asian, European and Muslim cultures.