A statement issued by the observatory’s press service said: “In 1966, during a Leonid meteor storm, people on Earth observed 10,000 meteors falling through the sky per hour, equivalent to two to three meteors per second. A similar storm could occur again in 2099.”
اضافة اعلان
Astronomers base their predictions on the fact that Earth will not encounter the dense dust clouds of comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, the parent comet of the meteor stream, until 2099.
An observatory expert told Russia’s TASS news agency: “Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle will return toward the Sun again between 2031 and 2064. Until then, meteor storms caused by the comet are not expected. However, the activity of the Leonid meteor shower could increase, potentially bringing the number of meteors visible in Earth’s skies to 100 per hour or slightly more.”
As for the peak of the Leonid meteor shower, expected on the night of November 18 this year, scientists predict that around 15 meteors per hour will be observed.
The Leonids, which are observed annually between November 6 and 30, are among the fastest meteor showers. Meteors can reach speeds of approximately 71–72 kilometres per second. They can be seen with the naked eye after midnight and until the hours before dawn.
