The most awaited Leonid meteor shower fails to meet the hopes of Asian Stargazers because of cloudy conditions. Stargazers who awaked throughout the night just to catch the glimpse of probable intense meteor shower were left disappointed.
The Leonid meteor shower best views were in India and Nepal petered out because of Cloudy conditions.
At Agra, the city of Taj, Pawan Sharma, a photographer by profession could only spot meteors, one of them big enough to be seen streaking across the sky in a window between the clouds. In India People just saw flashes of light for almost 10 seconds as bright as star Sirius.
The shower was caused by tiny high-speed particles from the tail of Comet 55 P/Tempel-Tuttle, which was last in the vicinity of the Earth in 1998.
NASA had anticipated that there would be up to 300 meteors raining down every hour. The Leonid meteors travel at 156,000 miles (251,000 kilometers) per hour. They consist mostly of dust and ice, and evaporate long before they reach the ground, so “you can go outside and watch the Leonid meteor shower without worrying about getting whacked on the head,” said scientist Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office.
On Leonid meteor shower night there are about eight per hour. In many of the viewing hotspots, in India, but hopeful visitors were let down by the weather.
One group of amateur astronomers in India at the Siriska wildlife sanctuary, south of New Delhi reported counting 78 during a four-hour period.
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