Leonid meteor shower: The History and Facts behind it!

Meteors and the meteor showers have always drawn attention of human beings. When meteors and other solar system materials enter the Earth’s atmosphere at speeds as high as 158.000 mph, they burn up, frequently leaving glowing trails for seconds or minutes before getting vaporized. The growing trails are what we call meteor showers! They are commonly known as shooting stars.

The Leonid meteor shower is one such barrage of shooting stars which appear from November 16th to November 19th every year. It arises from the astrological area of the constellation of Leo. The event is very regular and makes a spectacular show almost like clockwork every 33.3 years when the Temple-Tuttle Comet comes near Earth. The frequency of the Leonid meteor shower is like clockwork but the intensity varies from year to year.

Leonid Meteor showers create a wonderful streaky effect in the sky. The effects were mild in previous years but in 1994 and 1995, many more meteors were noted with as many as fifty per hour reported . When the intensity is high, then each of the shooting star has a long tail surrounded by a blazing vapor trail. Normal colors of the trails may vary from white to green and blue. The Leonid meteor shower starts from the bottom of the "sickle" of the Leo constellation, and then spreads across the sky creating the banded effects of lighting across the sky.

{Image Credit : Leonid meteor Shower :Courtesy NASA: Source : http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/leonid-meteor.jpg the sky}

Different cultures may have different beliefs but almost every culture has an apocalyptic legend. Ancient man associated meteor showers as angry god’s raining down their wrath on ordinary humans. The meteorites were a rich source of metals for humans but actually finding a meteorite was difficult and rare. Different cultures have different beliefs about the shooting stars but almost all cultures associate meteor showers, especially the Leonid meteor showers with nasty and unlucky events.

The most common understanding in the past was that the Leonid Meteor Shower events were feces of the gods showering down on humans! A yucky tale but very popularly used to describe the meteor showers in nearly every culture.

Chinese astronomers reported the first Leonid meteor shower in the year 902 AD and they reported the event as “stars fell as rain.”

A Leonid meteor shower peak was also observed during the death of Johannes Kepler. The event was recorded as a salute from God for the death of the famous personage in 1630 AD. In the year 1799 the next peak was recorded by scientists Humboldt and companion Bonpland.

The native Indians reported the Leonid Meteor Shower events as an annual event without even knowing what it meant. The Sioux Indians had special records called as "winter counts," preserved by painting on animal skin. There records were deciphered in 1984 by an anthropologist attached to the Smithsonian called Von Del Chamberlain.

The winter records had 45 references to a meteor shower in the years from 1833 to 1834. Fourteen other local tribes also recorded the same information. The Leonid meteor shower in 1883 was so intense, that thousands of meteors rained down for several hours all across United Sates. The event was so bright that people woke up thinking that the world was comming to an end!

The next few showers decreased in intensity until the late 1990s when the rate and streaks increased in intensity. The entire show could be easily viewed by the naked eye. Astronomers like Peter Jenniskens reported viewing the shower for as much as an hour and a half with bare eyes.

{Image credit: Above: Leonid Meteor Shower of 1883: Courtsey : nightskyhunter.com Source : http://www.nightskyhunter.com/images/Leonid%202.jpg}