Leonid Meteor Shower tonight: how to watch it live
Tonight is the most ideal of two nights to view the Leonid Meteor Shower raining down from the LEO constellation. To do this, you'll want to find a nice, flat spot to lie on the ground outside or on the floor inside – anywhere that you have a wide open view of the night sky. You'll want to be looking just between Leo Minor and Cancer, at the tail of Leo, in the Leonids area. Starting at around midnight Eastern time and onwards through the night you should have a fairly good view of the meteor shower overhead.
Idealistically speaking, tonight will be the clearest time to view this meteor shower. If you happen to be in an area where it's cloudy, you'll want to head over to the site Slooh to view the shower from a clear space online. According to Space.com, the Slooh Community Observatory will air a free Leonids meteor shower webcast starting at 8PM EST, Tuesday, (0100 GMT Wednesday) featuring live views from locations on four continents.
• You'll be looking to the Southwest.
• Just after Midnight Eastern Time.
• Emanating from the head of the lion.
The image above was captured by the desktop software Starry Night – which probably wont be especially helpful if you're searching the night sky for the constellations, but is a fine piece of software nonetheless.
If you're having trouble finding the constellations (as shown above) in your own night sky, you might want to check out the app Star Walk.
You can attain Star Walk 2 from the Google Play app store for free right this minute for your Android device. If you're using an iOS device, have a peek at Star Walk (not 2, 1) on the iOS app store. If you've found a better stargazing app, let us know!
The dust you'll find falling tonight comes from the comet Tempel-Tuttle. This lovely space rock was first discovered in 1865, and the showers we're seeing include dust that separated from the comet long ago.
The shower takes place between the 6th and the 30th of this month, but the best time for us to see it is tonight.