Give any friend a story

As a subscriber, you have 10 gifts to send every month. Anyone can read what you share.

The latest episode of cosmic activity in the night sky is the Leonid meteor shower. The month-long activity will peak overnight until early Wednesday morning.

If you are considering staying up late to watch the show, keep in mind that the moon close to the full moon may be brighter than some of the attractive streaks that observers can easily spot on darker nights.

As the earth revolves around the sun, it passes through the trajectory of debris ejected by comets and asteroids. When the debris of these trajectories is swept into the planet's atmosphere, they become meteors and burn out during a brief descent.

The result: a meteor shower, also known as a "meteor", can last from dusk to dawn and illuminate the night sky with rapid stripes.

The latest event is the Leo Meteor Shower, whose meteors come from material left in the dusty trajectory of Comet Tempel-Tuttle. It takes about 33 years for this comet to revolve around the sun, venture beyond Jupiter's orbit, and return to the inner solar system.

Every November, when the earth swings to the old trajectory of the comet, the meteor splashes into the atmosphere, drawing unique colored light streaks. The next close visit of Tempel-Tuttle will take place in May 2031, leaving new traces of debris that will hit the Earth’s atmosphere in the coming centuries.

But predicting the intensity of the comet's meteor shower year after year is not easy.

Some Leo meteor showers become meteor storms when comet fragments pass through the Earth’s atmosphere at a higher speed of 1,000 to hundreds of thousands per hour from close visits from the comet’s past. The celestial matter in those periods of increased activity comes from overflights in the past few decades. For example, in the storms witnessed in 2001 and 2002, the material mainly came from the passage of a comet in 1766. Russian astronomer Mikhail Maslov predicted that the next major explosion will occur in 2034, producing as many as 500 meteors per hour.

In a more typical year, such as 2021, showers produce about 15 visible meteors per hour.

Midnight on Tuesday to dawn on Wednesday morning is the best time to watch the Leonid meteor shower. NASA recommends putting a sleeping bag in an open area outside, lying flat, without obstruction to the night sky, away from the light pollution of the town.

Keep your eyes open and look at the sky-using binoculars or telescopes will narrow your field of vision.

Meteor showers are named after the constellations they seem to shoot out of the night sky, while Leo meteor showers are often drawn from the Leo constellation (a group of stars in the northern hemisphere). Keep your eyes close to Leo, but don't use too much force. When sky debris enters the atmosphere, bright streaks of light can pass through any part of the night sky.

Never miss solar eclipses, meteor showers, rocket launches or any other astronomical and space events beyond this world.

We can help you keep track of what is happening in our solar system and the entire universe.