Leonids Over Monument Valley
			
		
		
			Image Credit & Copyright:  
Sean M. Sabatini
		
		
			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?