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For other uses, see Leonid (disambiguation).

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The Leonids (/ˈliːǝnɪdz/ LEE-ǝ-nidz) are a prolific meteor shower

associated with the comet Tempel–Tuttle, which are also known
for their spectacular meteor storms that occur about every 33
years.[4] The Leonids get their name from the location of their
radiant in the constellation Leo: the meteors appear to radiate
from that point in the sky. Their proper Greek name should be
Leontids (Λεοντίδαι, Leontídai), but the word was initially
constructed as a Greek/Latin hybrid[citation needed] and it has been
used since. The meteor shower peak should be on November 17,
2022, but any outburst is likely to be from the 1733 meteoroid
stream.[5]

Leonids

A Leonid meteor during the peak of the Leonids in 2009

Pronunciation /ˈliːǝnɪdz/

Discovery date 902 AD (first record)[1]

Parent body 55P/Tempel–Tuttle[2]

Radiant

Constellation Leo

Right ascension 10h 08m [2]

Declination +22°[2]

Properties

Occurs during 6 November – 30 November[2]

Date of peak November 17[2]

Velocity 71[3] km/s

Zenithal hourly rate 15[2]

See also: List of meteor showers

Earth moves through the meteoroid stream of particles left from

the passages of a comet. The stream comprises solid particles,
known as meteoroids, ejected by the comet as its frozen gases
evaporate under the heat of the Sun when it is close enough –
typically closer than Jupiter's orbit. The Leonids are a fast
moving stream which encounter the path of Earth and impact at
72 km/s (45 mi/s).[6] Larger Leonids which are about 10 mm
(0.4 in) across have a mass of 0.5 g (0.02 oz) and are known for
generating bright (apparent magnitude −1.5) meteors.[7] An
annual Leonid shower may deposit 12 or 13 tons of particles
across the entire planet.

The meteoroids left by the comet are organized in trails in orbits

similar to – though different from – that of the comet. They are
differentially disturbed by the planets, in particular Jupiter,[8] and
to a lesser extent by radiation pressure from the Sun – the
Poynting–Robertson effect and the Yarkovsky effect.[9] These
trails of meteoroids cause meteor showers when Earth
encounters them. Old trails are spatially not dense and compose
the meteor shower with a few meteors per minute. In the case of
the Leonids, that tends to peak around 18 November, but some
are spread through several days on either side and the specific
peak changes every year. Conversely, young trails are spatially
very dense and the cause of meteor outbursts when the Earth
enters one.

The Leonids also produce meteor storms (very large outbursts)

about every 33 years, during which activity exceeds 1,000
meteors per hour,[10] with some events exceeding 100,000
meteors per hour,[11] in contrast to the sporadic background (5 to
8 meteors per hour) and the shower background (several
meteors per hour).

Meteoroids[7]
Size Apparent Magnitude Comparable in brightness

2 mm (0.08 in) +3.7 (visual) Delta Ursae Majoris

10 mm (0.4 in) −1.5 (bright) Sirius

20 mm (0.8 in) −3.8 (Fireball) Venus

History …

1800s …

A famous depiction of the Woodcut print depicts the shower

1833 meteor storm, as seen at Niagara Falls, New
produced in 1889 for the York. Mechanics' Magazine said
Seventh-day Adventist this illustration was made by an
book Bible Readings for editor named Pickering "who
the Home Circle. witnessed the scene."

The Leonids are famous because their meteor showers, or

storms, can be among the most spectacular. Because of the
storm of 1833 and the recent developments in scientific thought
of the time (see for example the identification of Halley's Comet),
the Leonids have had a major effect on the development of the
scientific study of meteors, which had previously been thought
to be atmospheric phenomena. Although it has been suggested
the Leonid meteor shower and storms have been noted in
ancient times,[12] it was the meteor storm of 1833 that broke into
people's modern day awareness – it was of truly superlative
strength. One estimate of the peak rate is over one hundred
thousand meteors an hour,[13] while another, done as the storm
abated, estimated in excess of 240,000 meteors during the nine
hours of the storm,[1] over the entire region of North America
east of the Rocky Mountains.

It was marked by several nations of Native Americans: the

Cheyenne established a peace treaty[14] and the Lakota calendar
was reset.[15][16] Many Native American birthdays were
calculated by reference to the 1833 Leonid event.[17]
Abolitionists including Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass as
well as slave-owners took note[18][19] and others.[20] The New
York Evening Post carried a series of articles on the event
including reports from Canada to Jamaica,[21] it made news in
several states beyond New York[22][23] and though it appeared in
North America was talked about in Europe.[24] The journalism of
the event tended to rise above the partisan debates of the time
and reviewed facts as they could be sought out.[25] Abraham
Lincoln commented on it years later.[26] Near Independence,
Missouri, in Clay County, a refugee Mormon community watched
the meteor shower on the banks of the Missouri River after
having been driven from their homes by local settlers.[27] Joseph
Smith, the founder and first leader of Mormonism, afterwards
noted in his journal for November 1833 his belief that this event
was "a litteral [sic] fulfillment of the word of God" and a
harbinger of the imminent second coming of Christ.[28] Though it
was noted in the midwest and eastern areas it was also noted in
Far West, Missouri.[29]

Denison Olmsted explained the event most accurately. After

spending the last weeks of 1833 collecting information, he
presented his findings in January 1834 to the American Journal
of Science and Arts, published in January–April 1834,[30] and
January 1836.[31] He noted the shower was of short duration and
was not seen in Europe, and that the meteors radiated from a
point in the constellation of Leo and he speculated the meteors
had originated from a cloud of particles in space.[32] Accounts of
the 1866 repeat of the Leonids counted hundreds per minute/a
few thousand per hr in Europe.[33] The Leonids were again seen
in 1867, when moonlight reduced the rates to 1,000 meteors per
hour. Another strong appearance of the Leonids in 1868 reached
an intensity of 1,000 meteors per hour in dark skies. It was in
1866–67 that information on Comet Tempel-Tuttle was gathered,
pointing it out as the source of the meteor shower and meteor
storms.[32] When the storms failed to return in 1899, it was
generally thought that the dust had moved on and the storms
were a thing of the past.

The November Meteors by Étienne

Léopold Trouvelot, 1868

1900s …

In 1966, a spectacular meteor storm was seen over the

Americas.[34] Historical notes were gathered thus noting the
Leonids back to 900 AD.[35] Radar studies showed the 1966
storm included a relatively high percentage of smaller particles
while 1965's lower activity had a much higher proportion of
larger particles. In 1981 Donald K. Yeomans of the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory reviewed the history of meteor showers for the
Leonids and the history of the dynamic orbit of Comet Tempel-
Tuttle.[36] A graph[37] from it was adapted and re-published in
Sky and Telescope.[38] It showed relative positions of the Earth
and Tempel-Tuttle and marks where Earth encountered dense
dust. This showed that the meteoroids are mostly behind and
outside the path of the comet, but paths of the Earth through the
cloud of particles resulting in powerful storms were very near
paths of nearly no activity. But overall the 1998 Leonids were in a
favorable position so interest was rising.

Leading up to the 1998 return, an airborne observing campaign

was organized to mobilize modern observing techniques by
Peter Jenniskens at NASA Ames Research Center.[39] In 1999,
there were also efforts to observe impacts of meteoroids on the
Moon, as an example of transient lunar phenomenon. A particular
reason to observe the Moon is that our vantage from a location
on Earth sees only meteors coming into the atmosphere
relatively close to us, while impacts on the Moon would be visible
from across the Moon in a single view.[40] The sodium tail of the
Moon tripled just after the 1998 Leonid shower which was
composed of larger meteoroids (which in the case of the Earth
was witnessed as fireballs.)[41] However, in 1999 the sodium tail
of the Moon did not change from the Leonid impacts.

Research by Kondrat'eva, Reznikov and colleagues[42] at Kazan

University had shown how meteor storms could be accurately
predicted, but for some years the worldwide meteor community
remained largely unaware of these results. The work of David J.
Asher, Armagh Observatory and Robert H. McNaught, Siding
Spring Observatory[8] and independently by Esko Lyytinen[43][44]
in 1999, following on from the Kazan research, is considered by
most meteor experts as the breakthrough in modern analysis of
meteor storms. Whereas previously it was hazardous to guess if
there would be a storm or little activity, the predictions of Asher
and McNaught timed bursts in activity down to ten minutes by
narrowing down the clouds of particles to individual streams
from each passage of the comet, and their trajectories amended
by subsequent passage near planets. However, whether a
specific meteoroid trail will be primarily composed of small or
large particles, and thus the relative brightness of the meteors,
was not understood. But McNaught did extend the work to
examine the placement of the Moon with trails and saw a large
chance of a storm impacting in 1999 from a trail while there were
less direct impacts from trails in 2000 and 2001 (successive
contact with trails through 2006 showed no hits.)[41]

Leonids as seen from space in

1997, NASA

2000s …

Viewing campaigns resulted in spectacular footage from the

1999, 2001, and 2002 storms which produced up to 3,000
Leonid meteors per hour.[39] Predictions for the Moon's Leonid
impacts also noted that in 2000 the side of the Moon facing the
stream was away from the Earth, but that impacts should be in
number enough to raise a cloud of particles kicked off the Moon
which could cause a detectable increase in the sodium tail of the
Moon.[41] Research using the explanation of meteor
trails/streams have explained the storms of the past. The 1833
storm was not due to the recent passage of the comet, but from
a direct impact with the previous 1800 dust trail.[45] The
meteoroids from the 1733 passage of Comet Tempel-Tuttle
resulted in the 1866 storm[46] and the 1966 storm was from the
1899 passage of the comet.[47] The double spikes in Leonid
activity in 2001 and in 2002 were due to the passage of the
comet's dust ejected in 1767 and 1866.[48] This ground breaking
work was soon applied to other meteor showers – for example
the 2004 June Bootids. Peter Jenniskens has published
predictions for the next 50 years.[49] However, a close encounter
with Jupiter is expected to perturb the comet's path, and many
streams, making storms of historic magnitude unlikely for many
decades. Recent work tries to take into account the roles of
differences in parent bodies and the specifics of their orbits,
ejection velocities off the solid mass of the core of a comet,
radiation pressure from the Sun, the Poynting–Robertson effect,
and the Yarkovsky effect on the particles of different sizes and
rates of rotation to explain differences between meteor showers
in terms of being predominantly fireballs or small meteors.[9]

Leonids
Year active Peak of shower ZHRmax
between

19 Nov. Outburst of ZHR=35–40

2006 was predicted from the 1932 trail. 78[51]
[50]

19 Nov. Outburst of ZHR=~30

2007 from the 1932 trail was predicted 35[52]
for 18 Nov.[50]

17 Nov.[39] Considerable outburst

14–22
2008 of ZHR=130 from the 1466 trail 99[53]
November
was predicted for 17 Nov.[50]

ZHRmax ranging from 100[54][55]

10–21 to over 500[39][56][57] on 17 Nov.
2009 79[58]
November The peak was observed at
predicted time.[58]

10–23 32±4[59]
2010 18 Nov [60]
November

6–30 22±3[59]
2011 18 Nov [61]
November

20 Nov. Nov 17 ZHR=5–10

6–30 47±11[59]
2012 (predicted) / 20 Nov ZHR=10–15 [62]
November
(predicted from 1400 trail)[50]

15–20 17 Nov but was washed out by a

2013 –
November Full moon on 17 Nov

6–30 15±4[59]
2014 18 Nov [63]
November

6–30
2015 18 Nov[59] 15[64]
November

6–30
2016 17 Nov[65] 10–15[66]
November

6–30
2017 17 Nov[67] ~17[68]
November

6–30
2018 17 Nov[69] 15–20[70]
November

6–30
2019 17 Nov 10–15[71]
November

6–30
2020 17 Nov 10–15[72]
November

6–30
2021 17 Nov[73] 10–15[74]
November

15
17 Nov (any outburst is likely to (predicted)
17-21
2022 be from the 1733 meteoroid - 300
November
stream) (possible)
[5]

15
17-21
2023 17 Nov (predicted)
November [5]

15–20
2024 17 Nov (predicted)
[5]

10–15
2025 17 Nov (predicted)
[5]

15
2026 17 Nov (predicted)
[5]

40–50
17 Nov (possible activity from
2027 (predicted)
1167 meteoroid stream) [5]

30–40
2028 17 Nov (predicted)
[5]

30–40
2029 17 Nov (predicted)
[5]

15-20
2030 17 Nov (predicted)
[5]

<10
2031 17 Nov (predicted)
[75]

<10
2032 17 Nov (predicted)
[75]

17 Nov (Outburst likely from 1899

300-400
meteoroid stream. Encountering a
2033 (predicted)
younger stream typically [75]
generates more activity.)

40–50
2034 17 Nov (predicted)
[75]

Predictions until the end of the 21st century have been published
by Mikhail Maslov.[50]

In media …

Two appearances of the Leonids frame the story of the 1985

novel Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

"Night of your birth. Thirty-three. The Leonids they were

called. God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes
in the heavens. The Dipper stove." – p. 3
"The rain had stopped and the air was cold. He stood in the
yard. Stars were falling across the sky myriad and random,
speeding along brief vectors from their origins in night to their
destinies in dust and nothingness." – p. 351[76]

The 1833 shower is referenced in the fourth section of William

Faulkner's short story "The Bear," as published in his 1942 novel
Go Down, Moses. As Ike reads the entries chronicling the slaves
owned by his family, the recording for Tomy lists her death as
June 1833, "Yr stars fell".[77]"

The plot of "Halloween Approximately", a 2000 episode of

Malcolm in the Middle, revolves around an attempt to view the
Leonids.[78][79][80]

In season 1, Episode 15 of Thunderbirds Are Go, "Relic", Tracy

family members, Alan and Scott, travel to the far side of the
Moon to rescue one of their father's old friends from an almost-
decommissioned moonbase at risk of being destroyed by the
Leonid meteor shower.[81][82][83] The series is set in the year
2060.

In season 1, Episode 1 of (The Brokenwood Mysteries) The

Leonids meteor shower is watched by a character in the episode
as he proposed to his wife on the 17th November and his killer
knew where he would be.

See also …

List of meteor showers

"Stars Fell on Alabama", based on the 1833 Leonid shower

Perseids, associated with the comet Swift–Tuttle

References

Further reading

External links

Last edited 24 hours ago by Kheider

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