dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) (11/14/84)
The Leonid meteor shower is one of the most famous showers in history. More on the Leonids -- after this. November 14 The Year of Stars Before telescopes were invented, the only astronomical events ever recorded were those visible to the naked eye. The movements of the planets, the rising of stars, the phases of the moon -- these all followed regular patterns. But sometimes a celestial event occurred that was unexpected -- like a star not previously visible flaring up and shining for a few days or weeks -- or an especially rich shower of shooting stars, which are also called meteors. Such phenomena would be written down in chronicles kept by a priest or a court scribe. The Leonid meteor shower is one astronomical event that's been reported in many old records -- in different countries and centuries apart. The Leonids come every year -- some years provide a spectacular sight of hundreds of thousands of shooting stars -- and other years aren't nearly so spectacular. One good year for the Leonids was in A.D. 902. It happened that the Leonids peaked the same night that an Arabian king died. Consequently, a report of both events noted that the king's death came in "the year of the stars". Subsequent reports during the past thousand years established that the spectacular years for the Leonids come about every thirty-three years -- and while they used to come in mid-October, there has been a gradual drift to where we now look for them in mid-November. This is not a vintage year for the Leonids, but the shower does peak Saturday morning. We'll talk more about it -- tomorrow. Script by Diana Hadley. (c) Copyright 1983, 1984 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin