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:: 11.18.2003 ::
:: "Leonid meteor shower hits peak tonight" ::
From FloridayToday.com:
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Tonight's the night when Florida stargazers have their best chance of spotting Leonids meteors.
Astronomers are forecasting a peak in in the meteor shower at 2:30 a.m. Wednesday. Night owls who go to a dark place and look up - and perhaps a bit east, toward the constellation Leo - could be rewarded with the sight of a shooting star a minute.
ALSO
From Yahoo! News:
Leonid Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight into Wednesday Morning
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer, SPACE.com
The Leonid meteor shower will peak late tonight into early Wednesday, hurling bits of ancient comet debris into Earth's atmosphere. While it will not match grand displays of recent years, the 2003 version is expected to provide a good number of shooting stars and a handful of spectacularly bright fireballs.
Weather permitting, skywatchers with dark skies could see a shooting star every minute or two. City and suburban dwellers will see much lower rates.
The annual Leonids are impossible to predict with certainty. Combined predictions by a handful of astronomers suggest residents of North and South America, Europe and Africa could see a modest show of swift shooting stars punctuated now and then by fireballs anytime from 11 p.m. Tuesday night through dawn Wednesday morning, local time.
"Skywatchers up and down the U.S. East Coast will have the best view," says Bill Cooke of the Space Environments Team at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. For a short stretch centered around 2:28 a.m. EST, easterners "could see more than one meteor per minute."
posted by me
:: 8:47:00 PM [+] ::
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