...and when that happens there's only one thing you can do...get beer and watch.

To all of you Chicken Littles out there, who like me are furious geeks and tremendous nerds and regard all things Astronomy with awe and wonder usually reserved for Star Trek and Star Wars and Star Search…okay maybe not Star Search…tomorrow there is an amazing meteor shower you should go out and see.

On Nov. 17, 2009, Earth will pass through the 1466 stream again, but this time closer to the center. This basically means that the skies will be alive with streaks of light for hours! Shooting stars and wonderful space oddities! (Not to be confused with a Space Odyssey which is another can of worms entirely.) It’s called the Leonid Meteor shower and the sky will be lit up with about 300-500 Leonids per hour.

That’s right, children…Mother Nature is putting on a laser light show just for you.

Ooooh. Aahhh.

The shower is visible every year around November 17 when the Earth moves through the Leonid meteor stream that comprises solid particles known as meteoroids, ejected by the comet as it passes by the Sun. Though the meteor streaks are parallel, they appear to originate from a single point in the sky and as a result Leonids get their name from the location of their radiant in the constellation Leo. Just before they enter the Earth’s atmosphere, Leonid meteoroids travel at 71 km per second, or 213 times the speed of sound

My suggestion, if you happen to live in the 305, is to get away from all the city lights and go West, young peeps, go West. Head over to Krome Avenue, over to La Calle Ocho and then head even more West out to the Everglades and go peep the show. For those of you in other parts of the world, you will want to head somewhere rural because the less glare from electric illumination, the better.

I’ll be out there, space lovers, with my eyes on the skies! Hope you are, too!

-goobs