With the peak of the Leonids before dawn on Wednesday 17th, there are a few for and against points when trying to view this Meteor shower. The skies are clearing though.
Usually, it is pesky cloud cover interrupting celestial viewing. This year for the peak of the Leonid meteor shower there will be a near-full moon (waxing gibbous). That is not ideal and it will be in the sky for most of the night apart from before sunrise. Often heading to a Dark Skies area helps with nighttime viewing. These meteors stream from the constellation of Leo, the Lion. There could be around 10 to 15 meteors per hour with the greatest number just before dawn when the moon has set.
Whilst the night of Nov 16th into early Nov 17th is the peak (particularly just before dawn) the Leonids should be visible before and in the nights after this. They come from debris in the tail of the Temple-Tuttle comet, occurring each year at this time.
If you are planning a viewing session a few things can help. You do need to let your eyes adjust. This can take 20 to 30 minutes, no looking at your phone, just the darkness. You will also need to be comfortable and warm. It has been mild by day but it is still nippy at night with temperatures falling away into single figures. Although no widespread frost is forecast it will feel cold with patchy fog in the south and a touch of frost further north under clearer skies by dawn. Put on warm clothes, thermals and a hat. Take a warm drink and a reclining chair so you can just view the sky. It’s a bit like fishing or trying to spot the Aurora, you have to put in the time, or just get really lucky. This meteor shower may not be like the summer Perseids when conditions can be milder and the show more prolific but its still special to view a few ‘shooting stars’
There is also a partial lunar eclipse early on the morning of the 19th. If you get to see this will depend on a balance of the moon setting, the partial eclipse timings and dawn breaking. And of course the cloud cover. It's something else to have a look at if you are out early, looking west/NW although for SE Britain it will only be 5 minutes whereas the Western Isles will have nearly an hour of viewing. Ideally, look for a low flat horizon.
Good places for viewing meteor showers or just star gazing are the various Dark Sky areas. The UK has seven Dark Sky Reserves and also two International Dark Sky Parks where there are pristine dark skies- Northumberland National Park and Kielder Water & Forest Park, and Tomintoul and Glenlivet in the Cairngorms National Park. The reserves include the Brecon Beacons, Exmoor and the North York Moors.
These “officially recognise certain areas to be naturally dark at night and free of light pollution, and therefore some of the best places in the world to view the beauty of the night sky”
There are free astronomy apps that can help find the constellation of Leo in the sky, such as SkyViewLite. It’s better to just look at a wide view of the sky when meteor spotting, rather than using binoculars.
