The Leonid meteor shower, an annual celestial event, will be visible in night skies throughout Colorado for about a week in mid-November.
The meteors will be active Nov. 14 to Nov. 21, with peak viewing falling at about 1 a.m. on Nov. 18, when about 100 to 200 meteors per hour could be visible, according to experts at the Fiske Planetarium at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
"Watching the Leonids is a bit like gambling -- it requires a lot of patience to get a big return," said Geoff Skelton, program supervisor at Fiske Planetarium. "This year in Colorado we might get a good, but brief, shower."
The Leonid Meteor shower occurs because the Earth crosses the path of the comet Tempel-Tuttle, which leaves a patchy stream of space dust and sand in its orbit. These space chunks are seen as meteors when they come close to the Earth and enter the atmosphere, Skelton said.
"Predicting meteor showers is a tricky business," he said. "Predicting the Leonids is more difficult than most because the Earth will be passing through a patchy river of dust and clumps of space debris left behind by comet Tempel-Tuttle. "More debris means more meteors," he said. "But it all depends on which part of the comet聮s path the Earth plunges through."
The best way to view the meteor shower is to get away from city lights and tall objects like trees, mountains or buildings that might block any possible view of the meteors. Once in a dark location, Skelton recommends bundling up and reclining back in a lawn chair, which will give the viewer the widest view of the sky.
During most of the Leonid meteor shower there will be about 10 meteors per hour, which is only slightly more than an evening without a meteor shower, he said.
The Leonid meteors, or shooting stars, named after the constellation Leo, will seem to radiate from the sickle-shaped curve of stars that marks the head of Leo the lion.