The 2009 Leonid Meteor Shower - Space News - redOrbit

Posted on: Tuesday, 17 November 2009, 08:20 CST This year's Leonid meteor shower peaks on Tuesday, Nov. 17th. "We're predicting 20 to 30 meteors per hour over the Americas, and as many as 200 to 300 per hour over Asia," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. The debris is a diffuse mix of particles from several old streams that should produce a gentle display of two to three dozen meteors per hour over North America. The double crossing could yield as many as 300 Leonids per hour. The Leonids are famous for storming, most recently in 1999-2002 when deep crossings of Tempel-Tuttle's debris streams produced outbursts of more than 1000 meteors per hour. The Leonids of 2009 won't be like that, but it only takes one bright Leonid streaking past Mars to make the night worthwhile. (1) Leonid forecasters use computer models to track the location of debris from Comet Tempel-Tuttle and to predict Leonid meteor rates when Earth crosses one of the debris fields. Here are some others: Jérémie Vaubaillon of the Institut de Mecanique et de Calcul des Ephemerides in France predicts 25 meteors per hour over North America and ~200 per hour over Asia. Another forecaster with a proven track record, Mikhail Maslov of Russia, predicts 20 to 30 meteors per hour over North American and as many as 140 per hour over Asia.