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The last episode of cosmic action in the night sky is the Leonid meteor shower. The month-long event will peak overnight into the early hours of Wednesday.

If you’re thinking of staying up late for the show, keep in mind that the nearly full moon is likely to overshadow some of the exciting lines that observers would easily see on darker nights.

What are meteor showers?

As Earth circles the sun, it passes through trails of debris emitted from comets and asteroids. The stray remnants of these trails turn into meteorites as they are dragged into the planet’s atmosphere, where they burn up during their brief descent.

The result: meteor showers, also called “shooting stars,” that can last from dusk to dawn and dazzle the night sky with fast streaks of light.

The latest event is the Leonids, whose meteorites come from material left behind in the dusty trail of Comet Tempel-Tuttle. It takes up to 33 years for the comet to complete a full orbit around the sun, move beyond Jupiter’s orbit, and return to the inner solar system.

Each November, meteors splash into the atmosphere, drawing uniquely colored streaks of light as Earth returns to ancient trails of the comet. Tempel-Tuttle’s next close visit will occur in May 2031, leaving a new track trail that will plunder Earth’s atmosphere for centuries.

But estimating the intensity of meteor showers produced by the comet from year to year is not easy.

Some Leonid showers become meteor storms when comet fragments tumble through Earth’s atmosphere at rates of 1,000 to hundreds of thousands per hour much higher than the comet’s past recent visits. The celestial material from these periods of high activity comes from the flights of the past decades. For example, during the storms witnessed in 2001 and 2002, material mostly came from the comet’s transit in 1766. Russian astronomer Mikhail Maslov guesses The next big eruption will occur in 2034 and will produce up to 500 meteors per hour.

In a more typical year like 2021, torrential rains yield about 15 visible meteorites every hour.

how to watch

Tuesday midnight to Wednesday morning dawn are the best viewing times to catch the Leonids in action. NASA recommends setting up a sleeping bag and lying on your back in an open area with few obstructions to the night sky, away from the light pollution of cities and towns.

Keep your eye on the sky—using binoculars or a telescope will narrow your field of view.

Meteor showers get their name from constellations in the night sky where they appear to be on fire, and the Leonids tend to originate in the constellation Leo, a star formation located in the Northern celestial hemisphere. Keep an eye out near the constellation Leo, but don’t get too focused. Brilliant streaks of light can pass through any part of the night sky as celestial debris blends into the atmosphere.