If a little stargazing this weekend sound like fun, then a celestial light show is coming. The annual Leonid meteor shower is set to occur in a few days. The shooting stars appear in the night sky as the Earth passes through the debris coming off of comet Temple Tuttle. Doctor Jeremy Bailin teaches physics and astronomy at the University of Alabama. He says you can see the particles coming off the comet and burning up in the atmosphere, if you’re away from city lights.
“The key thing is actually the problem that we're going to have this year is that the moon is going to be fairly bright, and so that's going to make the sky bright for all of us, regardless of whether you're in a city or not,” said Bailin. “So if you can find some way of blocking out the moon position yourself, so maybe there's a tree in front of the moon, or the corner of a building in front of the moon that will also help.”
The mantra for seeing shooting stars is avoid city lights, and the farther away you get from light pollution the better. Bailin suggests a minimum of fifteen minutes out of town, with thirty minutes being even better. Once you’ve driven away from the lights your home, Balin says picking out the right spot top watch is next.
“If you can see as much sky as possible, I like to find a hill that's sloping slightly down to the east, get a nice blanket out there and just lie down there and look at as much sky as possible. And then the chances that you're going to see meteors are obviously a lot higher there,” he said
There was a particularly good year for the Leonids in 1966 with thousands reported every hour. Bailin says, on average, to expect about ten meteors per hour during the this year’s shower.
