Spot meteors lighting the sky

WITH skies darker but still clear in many places, this is a great time to see the night sky with the Milky Way clearly visible.

The November meteor shower known as the Leonids will peak on the night of the 17-18 with two separate “best” viewing times – at 22.00 on the 17th and 5.00 on the 18th.

Sparked by sand-sized particles of debris from the comet 55P/Temple-Tuttle, which visits Earth every 33 years, the light-show comes as the dust streaks into our atmosphere at about 71km/second and is burned up in a flash.

The Leonids are among the fastest of the meteorites but some will last long enough to streak across much of the sky.

All emanate from one point, in the constellation Leo, and some are visible from this weekend onwards, building to the peak on November 17-18. However, the peak is expected to be only about 15-20 an hour – well down on the 3,000 an hour seen in 1999.

The new moon starts to light up the sky this evening but its glare will not spoil meteor-watching as it sets about 22.30 on the 17th.

Leo rises in the east-north-eastern sky and remains visible throughout the night.

The giant gas planet Jupiter is in Leo and gets steadily brighter as the month goes on – and it is strange to think that man-made spacecraft have already passed it and are continuing to study the outer planets.

You may just be able to spot Saturn to the left of the slim crescent as it gets ready to dip below the south-western horizon as Saturn heads behind the Sun.

Another possibility if the sky is very clear and you are far from a large town or city is to look for the M31 galaxy in the Andromeda constellation. Bright enough to see with the naked eye, it can be seen between the square of Pegasus and the W-shaped Cassiopeia almost directly overhead.

Follow the arrow formed by the right-hand half of Cassiopeia to see the galaxy. (A full description is on the Jodrell Bank night sky page - which also has a link to the largest Moon photo in history, which made it into the Guinness Book of Records).

The image above was taken in 1998 by Juraj Toth at the Modra Observatory and shows how the Leonids emanate from one point but can be seen across the sky. There are more modern colour photos on the Nasa Flickr site