The Leonid Meteor Shower Is Coming!

Meteors will soon start streaking through the sky thanks to the Leonid Meteor Shower. Come Saturday night, the Leonid Meteor Shower for 2012 will come to a peak. However, despite what most of the news media may lead you to believe, there is a lot more to the Leonid Shower than the night of the peak. While most news outlets only focus on the peak night, the fact is that the Leonids are already blazing trails through the sky.

Unlike what may have been suggested by most non-astronomical news sources, the Leonid shower lasts for about two weeks, a week on either side of the peak night. Why? The shower is caused by Earth running into a trail of space debris from Comet Tempel-Tuttle every year. Think of it as a rainstorm. When driving into a rain shower, the rain does not come and go in a sudden burst. Likewise, the trail of cometary debris is the same way in that it starts very light, gets thicker until the deepest point is reached, and then starts lightening up again until the Earth passes completely through. The shower is called the Leonid because the meteors seem to radiate from the constellation Leo.

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