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Shooting stars rain over Germany
© Lemonsoup14 / Adobe Stock
There is a lot going on in November: both astrologically and astronomically. After the lunar eclipse and the first shooting star shower, a real shooting star firework display follows.
If you see a shooting star in the night sky – as the saying goes – you are granted a wish. Then the wish should come true as long as you keep it to yourself. If you trust this superstition, on the night of November 17th/18th you have a good chance of sending a whole range of wishes into the universe. Then the Leonids will appear over Germany – one of the most well-known phenomena in the night sky. Here is all the information you need to know about it.
Leonids 2022: All information about the falling stars
It rains shooting stars all year round. However, they differ in their frequency. If they glide particularly often across the night sky, one speaks of shooting star streams, such as the Perseids in August, or as now, the Leonids in November.
However, if you now see large boulders in your mind’s eye racing through space at the speed of light, you are wrong. “Most of these dust particles are as small as grains of sand. As soon as they hit our protective atmosphere, they light up and appear as shooting stars in the sky,” explains the astrophysicist and director of the Hamburg planetarium to ndr.de. Incidentally, this rush of shooting stars is explicitly related to the burning up dust particles of comet 55P/Temple-Tuttel, which are traveling at ten to 70 kilometers (corresponding to a speed of 252,000 kilometers per hour) per second.
When can I see as many shooting stars as possible and where?
If you want to observe the sky spectacle, you need good stamina, because the ideal observation time is from midnight to early morning. As reported by news.de, scientists have calculated that in 1733 a large cloud of debris was split off from the main stream of the Leonids. According to this, the earth is supposed to collide with this cloud in the early hours of November 18th, which is why it should be possible for 300 shooting stars to flare up per hour. Incidentally, the name Leonids was not left to chance: they come from the eponymous constellation Leo, because it seems as if the shooting stars originate from this constellation.
Where is the cheapest place to observe the Leonids?
However, there is a drop of bitterness in terms of visibility: it should be overcast in large parts of Germany tonight. However, there are still chances on the night from Friday to Saturday, when shooting star hunters could get their money’s worth when the sky is clearer. In general, however, the following applies: shooting stars can be observed particularly well in rural regions where there are hardly any artificial light sources.
Sources used: merkur.de, news.de, ndr.de