Keep an eye on the sky early Monday morning for the Leonid meteors, and a possible second auroral storm.
Once every other generation, the Lion roars. If skies are clear Monday morning, keep an eye out for one of the best annual November showers, the Leonid meteors. Also, as an extra treat, the skies may stream with aurora once again.
To be sure, 2025 is an off year for the shower. But this year does have a few things going for it. First is the phase of the Moon: 2025 sees the Moon as a slim 6% waning crescent phase, rising only 2 hours before the Sun. This means the sky will be relatively dark and moonlight-free. Also, we’re within a decade now from the expected peak for the shower. Once every 33 years, the shower puts on an amazing show, hitting storm levels over a thousand meteors per hour.
In the late '90s we saw a distinct ramp up in activity from the Leonids, leading up to an historic peak in 1999 and 2000. We witnessed an amazing display from the Leonids while watching from the dark deserts of Kuwait in November 1998, as fireballs lit up the desert floor right before dawn. It was still one of the most memorable astronomical sights I ever saw. Looking into an active meteor storm radiant is the one time I had a real sense of hurtling through space, a ‘Star Trek’ looking-warp speed effect. I’d even put a meteor storm right up there with a great auroral storm and a total solar eclipse, in terms of astronomical events you need to see at least once in your lifetime.
Back to 2025. Though rates are expected to be down, It’s always worth keeping an eye out if skies are clear tonight.
But there’s another reason to watch the skies Sunday night. Massive sunspot region AR 4274 which lit up the skies last Tuesday night kicked off another X-class flare on Friday, November 14th. Though the group is now on the solar limb rotating away from us, it could deliver a glancing blow to the Earth’s space weather environment on the night of November 16/17th. The Veteran’s Day storm sent aurora as far south as Florida and Hawaii, and is worth watching for if skies are clear.
The source of the Leonids is periodic comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle. On a 33-year orbit, the radiant for the shower sits in the Sickle asterism and rises to the northeast for mid-northern latitude viewers around 11 AM local. Leonids are fast movers, and usually have a blue-white appearance.
Leonid storms in the 19th century sparked interest in the field of meteor science, and led to the connection between meteors and meteorites hailing from space, rather than being viewed as a purely atmospheric phenomenon. The 1966 Leonids still stand as one of the most amazing meteor showers on record, with observers in the U.S. southwest documenting an estimated 160,000 per hour (!)
Records of the Leonids go all the way back to 902 AD, and “The Year of Stars” noted in Arab annuals. The 1833 Leonids really startled early risers on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, when the sky seemed awash in shooting stars. Though poet Walt Whitman may have witnessed the Leonids in his early years, his poem *Year of Meteors 1859-1860* often attributed to the Leonids more likely refers to the Great Meteor Procession of 1860.
Watching meteor showers is one of the easiest types of observations you can do… you just need a set of working Mk-1 eyeballs and patience. You can also tune your radio and listen for meteor pings on the FM dial.
The Leonids also serve as a great opening act for next month’s Geminid meteors.
Will the lion roar again as we near 2033? Will astrophotographers nab the enviable ‘meteor plus aurora’ capture? Keep an eye on the sky Sunday night into Monday morning to find out!