Updated 10:59 AM EDT, Fri, Mar 29, 2024

Leonid Meteor Shower 2014: Live Stream, Peak Hours & How to Watch

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The Leonid meteor shower returns for its annual light show, and it's bound to peak tonight.

Stargazers hoping to catch a glimpse of the meteor shower can watch the live show online via two webcasts airing tonight (November 17) and into the early hours of Tuesday morning, Space.com reports.

The Slooh Community Observatory began its webcast at 8:00 pm EST (0100 GMT). NASA's started 7:30 pm EST (0030 GMT), with live views from Marshall until sunrise of Tuesday (November 18).

According to Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, "We're predicting 10 to 15 meteors per hour. For best viewing, wait until after midnight on Nov. 18, with the peak of the shower occurring just before sunrise," International Business Times reports.

In order to have the best view of the meteor shower, you have to get away from the city (where there are plenty of lights) and look for the constellation of Leo in the night sky. International Business Times noted that the quickest way to find Leo is to find one of the brightest stars in the sky, Regulus.

Space.com reports that Slooh's webcast can be watched directly at https://live.slooh.com/ and will also show views from telescopes in the Canary Islands and Arizona.

The Leonid meteor shower occurs every year whenever "Earth passes through the field of dust left behind after Comet Tempel-Tuttle speeds through the inner solar system every 33.5 years," according to Space.com.

Back in 2002, a few thousand shooting stars per hour was observed during the Leonid meteor shower. However, Space.com columnist Joe Rao said that a show like that will be unlikely this year.

"In contrast, at the point in the comet's orbit where we will be passing by on Tuesday morning, there is nothing save for a scattered few particles; stragglers likely loosed from the comet's nucleus a millennium or two ago," Rao stated, as quoted by Space.com.

There won't be much activity from the Leonid because the comet is currently in its farthest point from the sun, "meaning that most of the bits of debris sloughed off by the icy wanderer will be concentrated near that far point in its orbit, away from Earth," Space.com noted.

Slooh's live webcast of the meteor shower can also be viewed on Space.com. The webcast includes sounds of the meteors created by the ionization of the atmosphere as they rush toward Earth. To follow the webcast on Twitter, use the hashtag #SloohLeonids.

NASA's Leonid webcast can be viewed here.

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