A light show to remember for stargazers

MOUNT WILSON (CALIFORNIA), NOV. 18. Even veteran stargazers were amazed with the light show thousands of tiny meteors gave them early Sunday. This year's much-anticipated Leonids shower delighted people around the world who stayed up late or woke up early to see it, including a meteor-watching party of about 75 people atop Mount Wilson, north-east of Los Angeles.

Every few seconds at least a bit of space dust burned harmlessly into the atmosphere. The brightest flares left shimmering trails that hung for a few seconds. ``There are the little ``eeee'' ones, then there are the ``ooooh'' ones - those ones you have to stand up and follow with your head,'' said Ms. Susan Kitchens, a writer and artist at the Mount Wilson party. ``I've never seen it like this. I don't recall seeing this many meteors - ever,'' said Mr. Rick Yessayian, a sixth- grade teacher in Montebello who for nine years has helped organise the Mount Wilson party. The shower was less intense than the 4,000 per minute some had predicted, but nonetheless it was a more impressive display than astronomers have seen in years.

Between 800 and 1,000 meteors were falling an hour at the peak of the shower between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. EST, said Ms. Mitzi Adams, astrophysicist for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama. One observer in New York reported seeing three to five meteors a minute even after dawn broke, she added.

The Leonids are minute dust particles shed by Comet Tempel- Tuttle. The meteors are called Leonids because they appear to come from the direction of the constellation Leo the Lion. The comet swings around the sun once every 33 years, leaving a trail of dust. Each November, the Earth's orbit takes it through that slowly dissipating trail. Comet Tempel-Tuttle most recently passed close to the sun in February 1998. However, the dust particles seen as shooting stars across North America on Sunday were shed during a 1766 pass.

Those particles, each no larger than a grain of sand, enter the atmosphere traveling 70 km a second. When they meet the friction of air molecules, they burn up harmlessly, leaving only a brilliant streak of light. But for the estimated 630 operational satellites in orbit around the Earth, the particles can be deadly. Many satellite operators, in preparation for the shower, turn the spacecraft to shield them from the meteoroids or shut down electronic operations.

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