Bootid Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight

beanerspace writes: "It's a crap shoot, but some time around 3:00am EST tonight, put down the mouse and take a lookup the Big Dipper's tail. CNN, in an article entitled Meteor shower could be feast for eyes and ears reported that tonights display might be worth your while."

Comments

Leonids will be the big show

[imipak]

The Leonids are likely to produce a really spectacular show this November. You may recall that there's been considerable hype over this shower in the last few years. This is because the Earth's orbit intersects the densest part of the stream once every 33 years, and we're at that point roughly now. In addition, every few hundred years the Leonids produce a truly awesome outburst - rates of the order of 100,000 per hour. The last few years' results have allowed various models of the stream dynamics to firm up their numbers; the best model's predictions for last year were spot on. This same model predicts a large outburst in 2001.

NAMN (the North American Meteor Network) or the IMO (International Meteor Organisation, which is actually amateur - same as NAMN) are good starting points, or try the Google Directory or DMOZ Open Directory meteor sections for much more background reading. I strongly, strongly recommend doing some research before November, getting a bit of practice in, then do what I've done - book some time off work! :-)

--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

It would have been nice to know this YESTERDAY!

[Julius X]

...when the shower actually was.

Astronomers expect it to reach its peak Wednesday around 3 a.m. EDT

Which was 24 hours ago people......the article is dated two days ago. Someone's asleep at the wheel.

-Julius X