The starry sky of the early morning on November 18 in Japan may be filled with bright meteors. The coming storm of the Leonids is expected to peak around 20 h UT on November 17, which corresponds to 5 h local time on November 18 in Japan.
Japan is doubtless the most favorable place to witness the peak.
A NASA airborne mission, which consists of two research aircraft, will visit the Japanese sky in order to perform comprehensive scientific observations of the Leonids. In this situation, people living in the area outside Eastern Asia and Western Pacific may miss the Leonids peak directly. However, they do not need to give up. We, the Japanese astronomical community with a help of an internet company, are planning to broadcast it for those people. All these efforts are performed by so-called public astronomical observatories, which have been built by local governments as a part of scientific education for the general public.