It is expected to have Strong Leonid Meteor Shower in early morning of November 17 this year in North America. The very strong favor will be to the people of central and eastern Asia. In this region, meteor rates might briefly rise to a few hundred per hour.
“We’re predicting 20 to 30 meteors per hour over the Americas, and as many as 200 to 300 per hour over Asia,” said Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office.
The Leonids are a result of the comet Swift-Tuttle, which passes through the inner solar system every 33 years on its orbit around the sun. Each time the comet make s a pass, it leaves a new river of debris made up of bits of ice and rock no bigger than a sand grain but a few the size of a marble.
“We can predict when Earth will cross a debris stream with pretty good accuracy,” Cooke said. “The intensity of the display is less certain, though, because we don’t know how much debris is in each stream.”
When the Earth plows into the debris, the bits hit the atmosphere and vaporize, creating sometimes dramatic streaks of light and the occasional fireball with a smoky-looking trail that can remain visible for several minutes.
The Leonid stream is moving in the opposite direction of Earth, producing impact speeds of 160,000 mph (72 kilometers per second) – higher than many other meteors.
Source – Examiner.
