Fall 2002 Issue

The Leonids Meteor Shower
Past, Present, and Future
 

This November the Leonids meteor shower is predicted to produce a storm.  Such has been the stormy past of the Leonids. This article briefly documents the history of the Leonids and tells what can be expected for its future.

By Joe Lynch, N6CL
 

The 1833 Leonids meteor storm as seen from Niagara Falls, New York (from Smith’s Illustrated Astronomy, a school book by Asa Smith, 1864).

The Leonids periodic meteor shower has displayed some major shows during its more than 14 centuries of recorded tenure. It is because of these displays and current investigations that we have come to be aware that a storm is predicted for this year’s shower.

The Leonids Trail

In 1833, it was the forecast of a potential Leonids meteor storm that caused many to worry that the end of the world was near. Fortunately, the end-time prognosticators were wrong. What did result, however, out of the focus on the Leonids meteor showers was a better understanding of the predictability of the reoccurrence of this shower, and meteor showers in general.
As history shows, the Leonids seems to have been the Rosetta Stone, or the key to understanding how meteor showers occur. Because of its relatively predictable reoccurrence (every 33 or so years), astronomers have been able to study the Leonids and thereby make the tie-in with a particular comet and that comet’s periodicity.

Leonids Early Recorded History

The first recorded evidence of the Earth passing through the debris of a comet was late in the ninth century. In 868 A.D., the Earth passed through the path of the then unknown comet Tempel-Tuttle. It took approximately another 34 years before the Earth again passed through the comet’s orbit. Debris from this comet caused a meteor storm, which the Chinese recorded in 902 A.D.

It would be more than 850 years before anyone in the Western Hemisphere observed and recorded any other major meteor storms. Germans Humboldt and Bompland, then living in Cumana, Venezuela, observed the meteor storm of 1799 and wrote about it. From their investigation, they heard of observations of this storm as far south as Brazil and as far north as Greenland. Reports of the storm also came from Labrador, a fledgling country called the U.S.A. (in particular from Andrew Ellicott, who was on board a ship off the Florida Keys), Great Britain, and from their home country of Germany. They also heard from South American natives that a similar “rain of stars” had been seen 33 years earlier.

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