Memorable Celestial Fireworks!
The Leonids Strike Again and Again

          Call them fireworks or call them shooting stars, the nights of November 18th and 19th, 2001 featured hundreds (maybe thousands) of Leonid meteors sparkling around the night sky. Astronomers say it was the biggest display of this kind in 35 years.
          Why such a spectacular show for 2001? Because every 33 to 35 years, our planet plows through a "meteor storm," the cloud of fine, fast-moving debris shed by Comet Tempel-Tuttle, which loops around the Sun three times each century. When sand- or pebble-size grains of dust (stardust!) strike our atmosphere at very high speed, they leave streaks of superheated air behind them, just as fireworks do.
          In general, the streams of particles that produce such showers travel around the Sun in more or less well-defined orbits that cross the orbit of Earth. As the Earth circles around the Sun it passes through each stream at about the same date every year. The side of the Earth facing into the stream gets peppered with meteoroids, which vaporize in the upper atmosphere at altitudes of about 40 to 80 miles.
          For centures the Leonids have been attracting world attention in Europe, America, the Far East — just about everywhere there were people to see them. As early as 1863, Hubert Anson Newton, a professor at Yale University, researched written accounts of the Leonids back almost a thousand years. There are records of particularly impressive displays that took place in 902, 934, 967, 1037, 1202, 1366, and 1533!
          And for the record, the Leonids are the fastest meteors we know of, zipping along at speeds of about 44 miles (71 kilometers) per second. There's some real zoom-zoom for you!