"A Meteor Storm Alert! and: Our Moon Pays a Visit to the Two Largest Planets!"

Scheduled air date: 1999 Nov 15-21

The Leonid Meteor Shower may be exceptionally good this year, since its parent comet, Tempel-Tuttle, has recently passed through the inner solar system on its 33-year orbit.   While the Leonid shower normally produces only about fifteen meteors per hour, this year you might be able to see hundreds, or even thousands of meteors per hour!
The above illustrates that these meteors appear to originate from a point (marked by the red "+" symbol) within the constellation Leo, however they can appear anywhere in the sky.  The best viewing time will be between local midnight and sunrise on November 18th.

And the Waxing Gibbous Moon can be seen first beneath the brilliant planet Jupiter on the evening of the 20th, and then beneath the slightly fainter planet Saturn on the 21st.
(Shown about 8:00pm for mid-Northern latitudes.)

If you wish to view illustrations for other episodes, please see our Star Gazer Illustrated directory.

Illustrations on this page were created using TheSky Astronomy Software, an advanced desktop planetarium program designed for Windows. Copyright © 1999-2006 by Software Bisque, Inc.