The sky is falling! Or at least … it will be.
At around 4 a.m. Tuesday, the Leonid meteor shower will blaze across the sky at an average speed of 20-30 meteors per hour.
Back in the day, c.1833, the Leonids’ “were seen to ‘fall like snowflakes in a blizzard,’ with estimated rates of several dozen per second,” according to Sky & Telescope Magazine.
What’s your best chance of seeing this stellar light display? City dwellers might find the meteors a bit more difficult to see but the stargazers further out from the orange glow of the urban sky have the best chance of catching the show.
Skies will be partly cloudy in the early Tuesday hours, according to NBC4 meteorologist Tom Kierien. So be on the look out for a few random streaks of light running through the sky. Is it a bird? Probably not. Is it a plane? There’s a chance, but at that hour in the morning your best bet is that it’s the Leonid meteor shower giving you a show.