Best time to view the Leonid Meteor Shower 2009 is tonight

The annual Leonid Meteor shower reaches its peak early tomorrow morning (17th US/ 18th Australia) for those game enough to stay up or wake early to see it.

The Leonid Meteor shower is a prolific shower associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. The name, as it might suggest, comes from their location in the sky visually in alignment with Leo.

Depending on where you are during the shower will change what you can expect: in North America, expect to see between 30 and 200 meteors per hour. If you’re in Asia you could see more than 500 an hour, and possibly more than 1000 an hour.

If you’re looking to view the meteor shower in Australia, you might be hard pressed to see much at all, at least relative to how far south you are and you ability to view Leo. The meteors will appear in the North East.

Best time to view the Leonids meteor shower 2009 is from 1:30am through to dawn.