Watch The Leonid Meteor Shower This Weekend 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption NASA/Getty Images NASA/Getty Images 
 
 While some might say the weekend before Thanksgiving is too early for making a holiday wish, the Leonid meteor shower brings plenty of opportunities to do so every year around that time. 
 
 This year the shower of shooting stars is expected to peak late Saturday night and into Sunday morning. 
 
 Always occurring in mid-November, an average of about 15 meteors per hour streak across the night sky during the shower's yearly peak, according to NASA. 
 
 The cascade will be competing with a waxing gibbous moon, so the best time to watch is after the moon has set but before dawn. 
 
 NASA suggests finding a viewing site far away from city or street lights and giving your eyes time to adjust to the darkness. 
 
 "In less than 30 minutes in the dark, your eyes will adapt and you will begin to see meteors," the space agency writes. 
 
 Also, observers should be patient and prepared to get cozy, bringing a sleeping bag, blanket or lawn chair. They should also check the weather — clouds can ruin the view, and being cold can ruin the experience. 
 
 In the night sky, it will appear like the meteors are coming from the constellation Leo, which gives the shower its name. However, this is neither their origin nor the best part of the sky to look for them. 
 
 "It is actually better to view the Leonids away from the radiant: They will appear longer and more spectacular from this perspective," NASA notes. 
 
 The meteors themselves come from the comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, which completes an orbit around the sun every 33 years. When the comet passes the sun, a debris trail is created. The Earth then passes through the cloud of space dust every November. 
 
 This process means that every 33 years or so viewers on Earth may experience a Leonid storm, which is much greater in intensity than a Leonid shower and can produce hundreds to thousands of meteors per hour. 
 
 "These outbursts of meteor activity are best seen when the parent object, comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, is near perihelion (closest approach to the sun). Yet it is not the fresh material we see from the comet, but rather debris from earlier returns that also happen to be most dense at the same time," writes the American Meteor Society. 
 
 One such outburst occurred in 1966, with thousands of meteors blazing across the sky during the course of 15 minutes. 
 
 NASA hosts a webpage that compiles eyewitness accounts from that 1966 storm, and one of those eyewitnesses, Mike Jones, who was a cadet at Fort Wolters near Mineral Wells, Texas, at the time, says he observed dozens of meteors every second. 
 
 "The 1966 Leonid storm will always remain a natural wonder I'll never forget, the night the sky rained fire!" Jones wrote. ||||| Come early Sunday morning (Nov. 18), the famous Leonid meteor shower will reach its peak, with lesser numbers expected on the preceding and following mornings. 
 
 According to Margaret Campbell-Brown and Peter Brown in the 2018 Observer's Handbook of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Earth will pass through the thickest part of the Leonid swarm at 7 p.m. EST (2300 GMT) on Nov. 17. But the best time to look will be during the after-midnight hours of Sunday morning, once the source the meteors appear to stream from, called the radiant, comes above the horizon for observers in North America. The meteors appear to fly away from a point located within the Sickle of Leo (hence the name "Leonids"). 
 
 Actually, the very best time to observe the Leonids is as close to dawn as possible. This is when viewers will be able to avoid glare from a waxing gibbous moon (which sets before 2 a.m. local time) and the radiant will climb well up in the southeastern sky. [Leonid Meteor Shower: When, Where & How to See It] 
 
 This NASA chart shows where to look to see the 2018 Leonid meteor shower overnight on Nov. 17 and Nov. 18. Credit: NASA 
 
 Under ideal dark-sky conditions, a single observer can expect to see about 10 to 15 of these ultraswift meteors each hour. They ram into our upper atmosphere at 45 miles (72 kilometers) per second — faster than any other meteor shower. As such, as many as half leave visible trails, and every once in a great while you might be treated to an outstandingly bright meteor (called a "fireball") or a meteor that silently explodes in a strobe-like flash along its path (called a "bolide"). Such meteors become so bright they can cast distinct shadows. 
 
 Since November mornings tend to be quite chilly, verging on downright cold, the best suggestion is to be sure and bundle up. The best piece of equipment for meteor watching is a long lounge chair in which you can lie back and look up without putting any stress on your neck. Look up into the sky, keep your eyes moving around and don't stare at any one place. Pretty soon you'll see a streak in the sky; mentally trace the streak backward. When another streak comes by, trace that backward also and see if it came from the same region of the sky as the first. 
 
 By the time a third streak appears, you should be able to verify that the emanation point is indeed within the Sickle, a backward question-mark pattern of stars that marks the head and mane of Leo, the Lion. 
 
 What most people remember about the Leonids are the spectacular meteor displays that they staged during the 1998 through 2002 time frame. In some cases, meteors fell at rates of up to 3,000 per hour! The cause of these stupendous displays was Earth's interaction with dense streamers of dust trailing immediately behind Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, which sheds dusty comet debris into space each time it passes the sun at roughly 33-year intervals. The comet reached the far end of its orbit, called aphelion, in 2014, so the Leonids have been weak in recent years. 
 
 Unfortunately, on its way back in toward the sun, the comet will pass close to Jupiter, whose potent gravitational field will noticeably perturb the orbit of the comet and its accompanying dense trails of dust. So, stupendous "storms" of meteors are not likely to occur on the next Leonid cycle. Still, there is a chance of some significant activity. Russian meteor expert Mikhail Maslov has predicted that on Nov. 19, 2034, dust trails shed by the comet in 1699 and 1866 will partially overlap upon their interaction with Earth, possibly producing meteor rates in the many hundreds per hour. Not a meteor "storm," but still potentially a very impressive display. 
 
 Mark your calendars! 
 
 Editor's note: If you snap an amazing Leonid meteor shower photo you'd like to share with Space.com and our news partners for a possible story or image gallery, please send your photos to our staff at spacephotos@futurenet.com. 
 
 Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmers' Almanac and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for Verizon FiOS1 News in New York's Lower Hudson Valley. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. Original article on Space.com.
– It's time again for the Leonids, the meteor shower repeated annually in mid-November. It comes as Earth passes through a trail of debris left by the comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 33 years. Earth will pass through the thickest part of debris at 7pm EST Saturday, but the best time for viewing begins around 2am local time Sunday, after the waxing gibbous moon has set, per Space.com. NASA, noting viewers should allow up to 30 minutes for their eyes to adjust to the darkness, predicts an average of 15 meteors per hour will be visible and appear to come from the constellation Leo—hence the shower's name. However, "it is actually better to view the Leonids away from the radiant," NASA says, per NPR. "They will appear longer and more spectacular from this perspective." (Check out more astronomy stories.)