by Meg Rindfleisch
ITHACA, NY—Bundled up in a scarf, hat and jacket, Sean Killian rested his head on the cool ground at 2:30 a.m. Tuesday. He was anxiously waiting for the show to begin, sacrificing sleep just to get a glimpse. Clusters of Ithaca College students, like Killian, wandered around campus for the best views. This was going to be the show of a lifetime.
The main attraction of the night were the Leonids, an annually occurring meteor shower expected to peak between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. EST Tuesday. Below freezing temperatures weren’t enough to keep students in for the night, despite the cloudy conditions that prevented the majority of the meteors from being seen.
“Well, I only saw a few, but I had fun tonight even though it was cold. I’ll remember this night for a long time,” Killian said.
Many college students learned about the light show through social networking websites, such as Twitter and Facebook. The Facebook event titled “Leonid Meteor Shower 2009” had almost one million confirmed guests.
“I got a message on Facebook about the whole event,” said Emily Krempholtz, a sophomore at Ithaca College. “I was like, ‘Sure, I’ll see a meteor shower.’”
For many students, it was their first time witnessing a meteor shower. Even though the clouds interfered this time around, the popularity of the event on the Internet has sparked an interest in astronomy in young adults. Word is beginning to spread about the Geminid meteor shower, expected this December, on Facebook.
“I’ve never seen a meteor shower before,” said Paloma Altamirano, an Ithaca College student. “Hopefully, I’ll see more.”
The Leonids, like other meteors, are made up of tiny bits of space debris. Leonids are created from the comet Temple-Tuttle, which orbits the sun and passes through the Earth’s atmosphere every 33 years. Comets that enter the Earth’s atmosphere leave behind a trail of dust, which become meteors.
“The ones we see in the sky are very small particles, like bits of eraser from the end of a pencil,” Luke Keller, associate professor of physics at Ithaca College, said. “They are planetary material left over from the very early formation of planets in our solar system.”
As these Leonid dust particles travel through the atmosphere, they become hot enough to vaporize, traveling at speeds of 160,000 mph, according to SPACE.com. Sometimes, they even emit light, creating “shooting stars” that are seen from Earth. When groups of these particles are vaporized at the same time, giving the illusion of a meteor shower.
“Sometimes, the Earth in its orbit goes through a line of dust in the solar system,” Keller said. “They get close to the sun and they start to evaporate. As they do this simultaneously, it appears in the sky as a shower.”
The Leonid shower is named after the constellation Leo, which the meteors appear near. Other meteor showers, according to Keller, are named after the constellations they fly near, most notably the Geminids, the Orionids and the Perseids. Stargazers in Asia and North America had the best views of the shower, while those in Europe and Africa experienced daytime during the peak of the Leonids.
“As far as display goes, it all depends on who in the world has the nighttime,” Keller said. “It has to do with what side of the Earth is going through the comet’s tail.”
While viewer on the East Coast had a better chance of witnessing the shower in North America, the skies of Ithaca were too cloudy. By 4 am, Killian decided to call it quits, heading back to his dorm room to get some rest.
“There’s always next year,” he said.
