Where Are You Going to Watch the Leonid Meteor Showers Tonight?
The Leonid Meteor Showers are tonight! In case you missed that, the Leonid Meteor Showers are tonight!! It also happens to be a new moon (i.e., the moon is not visible in the night sky), which means it could be “one of the best Leonid showers in years,” according to NASA. Even cooler: the meteors will appear to be shooting from Mars, due to the happy fact that Mars will be passing by the Leonid radiant right around the time of the shower.
The stars are shooting between midnight and 5am. Unfortunately, we don’t have a dark sky preserve anywhere near us, so a friend suggests that we catch the show at Echo Mountain (a three mile hike at the end of Lake Avenue off the 210 in Pasadena) or the top of Mt. Hollywood in Griffith Park. Any other ideas?
An artist rendering of the November 12-13, 1833 Leonid Meteor Showers, courtesy the Wikipedia Commons.
Related posts:
There is supposedly a viewing spot off Mulholland between Kanan Road and Las Virgenes. If I can just stay awake… Best viewing is just before dawn (3-4).
About 10 years ago, I drove out to Malibu near Pepperdine and the viewing was pretty good.
You don’t have to go to a special dark-sky site, though.
All the articles always say you’ll see more meteors if you do, but mostly the only ones you’ll miss in the city are the really faint streaks. The bright ones show up just fine, as long as you can get somewhere where there isn’t any direct light glaring into your eyes.
I’ll be watching from my own backyard in Studio City, where I’ve seen plenty of perfectly fine meteors over the years.
(In fact, I should get off the computer and let my eyes dark-adapt, already. Twenty minutes of sitting in the dark inside before you go out and freeze your tuchus off staring at the sky is always a good idea.)
[...] desires. I wish I could post a picture of them all – and while we’re wishing upon shooting stars, I also wish my camera didn’t crap out and lose a bunch of the pictures I took there – [...]