60 years ago the Leonid meteor shower produced 144,000 meteors per hour. Could it happen again?
In more recent years, most notably 1999, 2001 and 2002, lesser Leonid displays of up to "only" a few thousand meteors per hour took place.
Key points
- Such meteor storms have indeed occurred with the Leonids, such as in 1833 and 1966 when meteor rates of tens of thousands per hour were observed.
- The Leonids are so named because the shower's radiant point, from where the meteors seem to fan out, is located within the constellation of Leo the Lion, from the backward question mark pattern of stars known as " The Sickle." The meteors are caused by the Tempel-Tuttle comet, which sweeps through the inner solar system every 33⅓ years.
- So, this year's Leonids are expected to show only low activity; "maybe" at best 10 to 15 Leonids per hour might be seen, but more likely hourly counts will be less than that.
The Leonid meteor shower is one of the most celebrated of the year's annual displays of "shooting stars." The mere mention of the Leonids usually elicits mental images of a sky filled with shooting stars pouring down through the sky like rain.
Sixty years ago, one of the most stupendous Leonid meteor displays lit up the predawn skies over the central and western U.S.
Additional details
- According to the International Meteor Organization's 2026 meteor shower calendar, the Leonids are expected to reach their regular maximum at 23:45 UTC (6:45 p.m.
- A meteor streaks across the sky above Payson, Arizona during the Leonid meteor shower.
- The comet has since spent the last dozen years slowly approaching the inner solar system, but it's still 1.11 billion miles (1.79 billion km) from the sun, which is still well beyond the orbit of Saturn.
- In contrast, at the point in the comet's orbit where we will be passing by on Tuesday morning, there is nothing save for a scattered few particles; bits and pieces likely loosened from the comet's nucleus a millennium or two ago.
- 17, with around 15 meteors per hour possible under ideal viewing conditions.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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