‘227 Images Perseid Meteor Shower’
courtesy of ‘aresauburnâ�¢’
The sky is falling! Or at least … it will be.
At around 4 a.m. Tuesday, the Leonid meteor shower will blaze across the sky at an average speed of 20-30 meteors per hour.
Back in the day, c.1833, the Leonids’ “were seen to ‘fall like snowflakes in a blizzard,’ with estimated rates of several dozen per second,” according to Sky & Telescope Magazine.
What’s your best chance of seeing this stellar light display? City dwellers might find the meteors a bit more difficult to see but the stargazers further out from the orange glow of the urban sky have the best chance of catching the show.
Skies will be partly cloudy in the early Tuesday hours, according to NBC4 meteorologist Tom Kierien. So be on the look out for a few random streaks of light running through the sky. Is it a bird? Probably not. Is it a plane? There’s a chance, but at that hour in the morning your best bet is that it’s the Leonid meteor shower giving you a show.
Rachel moved to DC in the fall of 2005 to study Journalism and Music at American University. When she’s not keeping up with the latest Major League Baseball news, she works on making music as an accomplished singer-songwriter and was even a featured performer/speaker at TEDxDupont Circle in 2012. Rachel has also contributed to The Washington Examiner and MASN Sports’ Nationals Buzz as a guest blogger. See why she loves DC. E-Mail: rachel@welovedc.com.
Eight years ago, I saw them from the roof of a Holiday Inn in downtown New Haven. That’s urban and we saw a lot of them.
2001 Leonids — best meteor shower I’ve seen, about 5 per second at peak out at the battlefield in Manassas.
I live up in northern Minnesota, there is little light pollution here and every year I have had an amazing view of the leonids showers! I decided to setup a couple cameras with live feeds to share my view with others. If you’re interested you can check it out at my website here: http://tinyurl.com/watch-leonid-meteor-live