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Moscow Planetarium alerts star gazers to peak of Leonid meteor shower tonight

The Leonids will be best observed in a clear sky in the wee hours above the eastern horizon

MOSCOW, November 17. /TASS/. Weather permitting, Earthlings will be able to see a sky full of shooting stars tonight, when meteors are expected to rain down on the planet, the Moscow Planetarium told TASS.

This year, meteor showers, a phenomenon observed annually in November, will peak on the night of November 17. The radiant, or the point where this meteor shower seems to stream from, is in the constellation Leo.

"Some 15 meteors per hour are expected to be seen at the zenith point. <…> The Leonids will be best observed in a clear sky in the wee hours above the eastern horizon, when the constellation Leo rises high above it," astronomers advised.

Leonids are bright and fast-moving white meteors. The intensity of meteor showers varies year to year as it depends on how dense the streams of particles trailing the Comet Tempel-Tuttle as Earth moves through them are.

The comet makes a beeline for the Sun once every 33 years, producing strong meteor activity on Earth. In 1833, people on Earth observed an especially bright meteor shower as thousands of streaks of light were seen in the sky. Those who were awake to witness the storm said it was like a snowstorm. And in 1966, witnesses of the Leonids could count 10,000 meteors per hour, or two to three per second.

Scientists predict that the next big meteor event will occur in 2099.