Results tagged “meteorshower”

If the weather cooperates, it's going to be a good night for looking into the skies. "The annual Leonid Meteor Shower reaches its traditional peak between midnight at 5:00 a.m. on Tuesday, November 17 as seen from the west coast," explained Anthony Cook at the Griffith Observatory's weekly Sky Report. "About one Leonid every two or three minutes is expected. The earth may pass through enhanced streams of particles during the following afternoon, possibly providing Asia with an even better show, and may make the shower worthwhile to watch again from here between midnight and 5 a.m. on Wednesday morning, the 18th."

The annual Perseid meteor showers has been around since July, but tonight and early tomorrow morning is its expected peak for visual gratification. Los Angeles' light pollution and the moon will distract somewhat, but there are some solutions if you can't travel afar to the likes of Joshua Tree or the Channel Islands.

This weekend hosts a few nights of pleasant sky viewing with the moon in a full phase and one of the most spectacular meteor showers. That is, if the cloud cover clears.

If tonight ends up being (another?) a late night for you, you might want to step outside and take a look up in the skies:

After the Moon sets – around 11 p.m. local time on Nov. 5, later on subsequent nights – some 10 to 15 meteors may appear per hour. They are often yellowish-orange and, as meteors go, appear to move rather slowly. Their name comes from the way they seem to radiate from the constellation Taurus, the Bull, which sits low in the east a couple of hours after sundown and is almost directly overhead by around 1:30 a.m. [Yahoo! News]

This upcoming round of Taurid meteor showers, often thought of as "shooting stars" will contain larger fragments than other meteors, which means we might see something akin to "fireballs" in the sky.

With up to two meteors flying by per minute, tonight's big Perseid meteor shower (around 1 a.m. to 4 a.m.) is probably one of the best. Of course, being in the city, gazing at the sky can be pretty useless when trying to find stars.