Explanation: It was a night of 100,000 meteors. The Great Meteor Storm of 1833 was perhaps the most impressive meteor event in recent history. Best visible over eastern North America during the pre-dawn hours of November 13, many people -- including a young Abraham Lincoln -- were woken up to see the sky erupt in streaks and flashes. Hundreds of thousands of meteors blazed across the sky, seemingly pouring out of the constellation of the Lion (Leo). The featured image is a digitization of a wood engraving which itself was based on a painting from a first-person account. We know today that the Great Meteor Storm of 1833 was caused by the Earth moving through a dense part of the dust trail expelled from Comet Tempel-Tuttle. The Earth moves through this dust stream every November during the Leonid meteor shower. Later this week you might get a slight taste of the intensity of that 1833 meteor storm by witnessing the annual Geminid meteor shower.

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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.

Publikacii s klyuchevymi slovami: meteor shower - meteornyi dozhd' - Leonidy Publikacii so slovami: meteor shower - meteornyi dozhd' - Leonidy
Sm. takzhe: Severnye Kvadrantidy Geminidy nad kitaiskim ozerom Nianhu Orionidy v Tel'ce Pyl' komety Galleya, pyl' Marsa i Mlechnyi Put' Leonidy i Orion Pyl' komety Galleya za sem' let Meteornyi dozhd' nad Tunisom Vse publikacii na tu zhe temu >>