Put on your knit ski hat, zip up your winter coat, pour a hot beverage… and just look up. Get away from street lamps, turn off the porch light and find a patch of dark sky. It’s time for the Leonid meteor shower peak tonight and into tomorrow morning. Like the Perseid meteors in August, the Leonid shower in November has potential to be interesting, but this is a year of low strength. Later this evening and past midnight, astronomy experts predict about 15 to 20 each hour could fly through our sky. You won’t see all the meteors, but if you see four or five each hour, you’re doing well. If you saw last night’s young crescent moon at dusk in the western sky, we’re still dealing with a (one-day older) adolescent slim moon. It sets early enough in the evening to give sky gazers a dark opportunity to scout more shooting stars. Meteors are just cosmic trash. When comets fly about the heavens, they leave dusty trails. Earth, on its own annual cruise around the sun, sometimes runs into the trails of comet debris left behind. Earth runs into these ribbons of debris and as these minute pieces of dirt strike our atmosphere, they burn up. We see them as streaks across our heaven Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...871507a-2ffc-11e2-9f50-0308e1e75445_blog.html
