Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Monday, November 17th.  The sun will rise at 7:41.  It’ll be up for 9 hours and 30 minutes, setting at 5:12.   The moon, 3 days past last quarter, will rise at 3:30 tomorrow morning.

This week the Leonid meteor shower will again be seen.  This is an unremarkable shower most years, but about every 33 years can be spectacular.  This year we could see two peaks to the shower.  Problem is that the peak activity for the Leonids last only an hour of so.  The first is in the afternoon our time today.  The radiant rises at midnight and one may be able to spot a few meteors after that.  There is another peak calculated to be centered on 4:17 a.m. on Friday the 21st.  It is supposed to be debris left by the comet responsible for the Leonids, Tempel-Tuttle back in 1567.  Every once in a while the Leonids surprise us.  Meteors are the streaks we see when grain sized particles shed by comets zip through the atmosphere at interplanetary speeds.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Leo rising at around 2 a.m. on the morning of November 20. Note the radiant in the sickle asterism of Leo. Created using Looking Up, my own program.

A famous woodcut of the 1833 Leonid meteor storm.