Natural flashes November also offers us a chance to see natural flashes of light in the night sky. The annual Leonid meteor shower peaks on Tuesday night, Nov. 17. This shower usually produces just a few meteors per hour for an observer at a dark country site. The last Leonid storm occurred in 1966, so when we do the 33-year math, we come up a year short. Even though chances for a Leonid meteor storm are believed to be better in November 1999, astronomers will be watching next month in case the storm arrives early.
Meteors are small pieces of rocky material left in the wakes of comets orbiting the sun.
Occasionally, the Earth's orbit and the comet's orbit intersect and we have a meteor shower. When these small particles hit the atmosphere at a speed of 40 miles per second, friction with the Earth's atmosphere heats to white-hot temperatures in an instant. Most burn up completely in our atmosphere. When Earth encounters the densest part of a stream of meteor particles, we can have a meteor storm. Meteor experts think the best chance for seeing a Leonid storm this year lies with observers in eastern Asia.