Kathmandu, November 16:

There will be a meteor shower in the early morning hours of November 19. The Leonid meteor shower named after the constellation Leo will be seen as bright shooting stars in maximum number in the north-east sky.

Experts have predicted that as many as 15 to 20 meteors could be seen per hour. “But meteor showers are notorious for defying predictions,” said Suresh Bhattarai of the Nepal Astronomical Society (NASo).

“It could either be 30 to 40 or less than ten in number,” he said. Leonids are annual and they are seen in mid-November, but the number of meteors vary every year.

A meteor shower is the result of an interaction between earth and Comets that are like ‘dirty snowballs’ made up of ice and rock, orbiting the sun. Each time a comet swings by sun in its orbit, some of its ice melts and it sheds a large amount of debris. As the debris streams from the comet, it forms the comet’s visible tail. Meteor shower is seen if the earth travels parallel to this stream. “The best time to watch the shower will be between midnight and dawn,” said Jayanta Acharya, astronomer at the Balmiki Campus.

There will be no detectable colour of the meteors, but they will be seen very bright and speedy and will be visible from Nepal.