Leonid Meteor Shower 2021: Top States That Has The Best View For This Celestial Event

Prepare your binoculars because meteors will light up the sky with their brief flashes on Wednesday morning.

On November 17, the Leonid meteor shower will surge in the early morning hours.

NASA said this meteor shower has a storm per 33 years, with the most recent in 2002.

The space agency added that the meteor debris comes from Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, a tiny comet measuring 2.24 miles (3.6 kilometers) in diameter.

According to NASA, the comet is rushing through space at a speed of 44 miles per second (71 kilometers per second).

The Leonid meteor shower is expected to produce 10 to 15 meteors per hour. It will be observed in various locations of the United States when the weather is clear, EarthSky noted.

According to NASA, a meteor storm has at least 1,000 shooting stars every hour, much greater than a meteor shower.

Depictions of the 1833 Leonid meteor storm—during its peak, 100,000 meteors fell in an hour. Many thought the world was coming to an end. pic.twitter.com/S1URSuhMjp
— JACOB EVERETT (@blauer_geist) November 12, 2021

(Photo : ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)
Stars streak above a building on Tai Mo Shan, Hong Kong's tallest mountain, after the thousands of star gazers left early following a less than spectacular show of the Leonid meteor shower 18 November. The mountain was covered with star gazers who battled intermittent cloud to get a glimpse of the celestial performance before heading home at around 3:30am.

Meteor Shower Explained

The New York Times said the Earth passes through debris trails left by comets and asteroids as it round the sun.

When stray remains of these tracks are dragged into the planet's atmosphere, they form meteors and burn up during their brief descent.

As a result, meteor showers, commonly known as "shooting stars," can linger anywhere from twilight to morning and dazzle the night sky with flashes of light.

The Leonids are the most recent occurrence, with meteors originating from debris left behind in the dusty track of the comet Tempel-Tuttle.

The comet takes around 33 years to complete a full circuit around the sun, passing beyond Jupiter's orbit and returning to the inner solar system.

Each November, metals crash into the sky when Earth swings through ancient comet paths, painting strikingly coloured streaks of light.

ALSO READ: Leonid Meteor Shower 2021: How, Where To Watch This Most Historical Event Soon

Tempel-Tuttle will make its next near approach in May 2031, producing a new trail of pieces that will pummel Earth's atmosphere for generations.

However, estimating the strength of the comet's meteor showers from year to year is difficult.

When cometary pieces careen through Earth's atmosphere at significantly greater rates, ranging from 1,000 to hundreds of thousands per hour, certain Leonid showers become meteor storms.

Those heightened times of activity produced celestial material from previous decades' flybys.

The material used in storms in 2001 and 2002, for example, originated primarily from the comet's flyby in 1766.

The next great burst, according to Russian astronomer Mikhail Maslov, will occur in 2034, releasing up to 500 meteors per hour.

States That Have Better Viewing of This Month's Meteor Shower

The Leonids' appearance in 2021 peaks just a few evenings before the full moon. This means that for the majority of the night, a brilliant, nearly full moon will be visible in the sky, blotting away some of the fainter meteors.

Despite the moonlight, observers may see some shooting stars since the meteors connected with the Leonids are very bright.

Focus on a darker section of the sky away from the moon to have the highest chance of seeing a meteor.

The Taurid meteor shower, active throughout November, may produce a few extremely brilliant fireballs in the sky.

According to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Adam Douty, an area of high pressure located across the southeastern United States could provide good viewing conditions to the region from Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.

Douty said clear skies might extend north into New England, but clouds may form as a storm approaches.

As a huge cold front cuts through the region, chances will be less favorable in sections of the Central states.

The Great Lakes and Upper Midwest are likely to have poor viewing conditions, while the Plains will have slightly better circumstances.

Douty said a large portion of the interior West, including the Great Basin, could see mostly clear skies.

However, persisting clouds in the Northwest and the northern Rockies can create a mixed bag of viewing circumstances, with some regions seeing breaks in the clouds and others remaining cloudy, he said.