Leonids Over Monument Valley

What’s happening in the sky over Monument Valley? A meteor shower. Over the past weekend the Leonid meteor shower has been peaking. The image — actually a composite of six exposures of about 30 seconds each — was taken in 2001, a year when there was a much more active Leonids shower. At that time, Earth was moving through a particularly dense swarm of sand-sized debris from Comet Tempel-Tuttle, so that meteor rates approached one visible streak per second. The meteors appear parallel because they all fall to Earth from the meteor shower radiant — a point on the sky towards the constellation of the Lion ( Leo ). Although the predicted peak of this year’s Leonid meteor shower is over, another peak may be visible early tomorrow morning. By the way — how many meteors can you identify in the above image?