Leonid meteor shower to brighten November sky next week

YahooNews India ^ | Nov 13,2010 | YahooNews

[ColdOne]

Washington, Nov 13 (ANI): Astronomy enthusiasts will be treated with best viewing of the Leonid meteor shower in the two to three hours before dawn on November 17 and 18, says the StarDate magazine.

[JoeProBono]

The Leonid meteor shower, called so because it happens around and near the constellation Leo, is leftovers from the comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle that scattered space dust around the year 1533. The Earth moving through that dust makes these fantastic "shooting stars" throughout the sky. The shower was most visible in Asia and said to have produced hundreds of "shooting stars" per hour, 300 to 500.

[JRandomFreeper]

Granted, I like sunspots and solar events because I do the di-da-dit thing. But going out to watch rocks/dust falling from the sky? Hello! "There are rocks overhead that are falling this way, let's stand here and watch!" ;)

And yes, I will hold your beer while you do that.

/johnny

[COBOL2Java]

That picture reminds me of a bad night of drinking I had when I was 17.

[ColdOne]

Mr. ColdOne and I used to watch it all the time when we lived in California. It is always cloudy for us now.. It is a beautiful thing to watch.

[qam1]

Unfortunately there will be a bright moon drowning them out

[JRandomFreeper]

Oy. I wish you hadn't said that. 17 years old, back of a '54 Ford pickup, trying to get a foot on the ground to stop the world from spinning. That memory had been safely supressed.

/johnny

[Elle Bee]

bump

.

[Calvin Locke]

If you're lucky, a nickel-to-quarter size object may light up the sky and ground before it burns up, tens of mile above the Earth.

Otherwise, you're talking grain-of-sand size or so that are usually quite fleeting.

I'll go so far as to say that you won't even have to bother covering that beer from any meteor ash...

[rdl6989]

bump

[JRandomFreeper]

I'll be inside doing the di-da-dit thing with a roof over my head. And a piece of paper over a beer (or cup of coffee), because dust from the F-18s shaking the rafters is prevalent here.

We get how many tons of dust raining down on us every day from orbit?

But to go outside and stand still and point at the pretty rocks falling this way just seems silly.

There is a bell curve on object size. Yes, most will be dust, some will be golf-ball sized.

But considering my luck.... the golf ball would be a VW Golf size object.

I'll stay indoors like the good Lord intended, thankyouverymuch...

/johnny

[Past Your Eyes]

Came back to the barracks from the E club at Camp Lejeune. Stepped out of the air conditioned club into 90 degree humidity, found my way somehow back to the barracks - second floor, top bunk, and hung on hard all night trying to keep the dang thing from tipping over. Haven’t done anything like that since and that was over 40 years ago.

[Ransomed]

OMG look at all the chinese missile launches that night!

Freegards

[JRandomFreeper]

I remember a similar event at Lowry AFB. I clearly remember wondering why Colorado was experiencing earthquakes and why in the world I had a mouthfull of turf.

Ah, to be young and stupid and bounce back so quickly.

Not for overtime wages. Never again. ;)

/johnny

[Beowulf9]

But...there will be one bright spot missing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WV-tmakq5E

[Oatka]

See the movie and BEWARE :-)

For those haven't seen it, the IMDb plot synopsis: "A shower of meteorites produces a glow that blinds anyone that looks at it. As it was such a beautiful sight, most people were watching, and as a consequence, 99% of the population go blind. In the original novel, this chaos results in the escape of some Triffids: experimental plants that are capable of moving themselves around and attacking people. In the film version, however, the Triffids are not experimental plants. Instead they are space aliens whose spores have arrived in an earlier meteor shower."

Hint: Humans, the other white meat.

[Oatka]

See the movie and BEWARE :-)

For those haven't seen it, the IMDb plot synopsis: "A shower of meteorites produces a glow that blinds anyone that looks at it. As it was such a beautiful sight, most people were watching, and as a consequence, 99% of the population go blind. In the original novel, this chaos results in the escape of some Triffids: experimental plants that are capable of moving themselves around and attacking people. In the film version, however, the Triffids are not experimental plants. Instead they are space aliens whose spores have arrived in an earlier meteor shower."

Hint: Humans, the other white meat.

[Verginius Rufus]

Never could figure out why a brain-dead non-entity like Brezhnev should have a meteor shower named for him.

[Revolting cat!]

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks ColdOne. One of these meteors looks suspicious, we'd better put a tail on it.

[rimshot!]

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