Early birds in Zoetermeer, pay attention! On Saturday, November 18, 2023, you can see about twenty to thirty shooting stars around 6:00 am. A telescope is not necessary, because they are easy to see with the naked eye. If the weather conditions are good, of course.
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To get straight to the point, the chance of a crystal clear night is quite small. This is what Berend van Straten, meteorologist at WeerOnline.nl. “But some clear spells are certainly possible.”
Dark place
Not only on Saturdays can shooting stars be seen above Zoetermeer, they can also be observed in the days before and after the 18th. Of course you can see this best in a dark place, such as the Bentwoud. “In a dark location you see four times as many meteors as in a light-polluted area,” says Berend.
Leonids meteor shower
The Leonids are an annual meteor shower that appears in the sky around November 17 and 18. The radiant, the point from which they appear to come, is in the constellation Leo (the Latin name is Leo). The meteors travel through space at about 253,800 kilometers per hour, which is relatively fast, according to the website sky.observe.com.
What is a shooting star?
Shooting stars are flashes of light that occasionally appear in the starry sky. However, the flashes have nothing to do with stars. They are caused by space debris, often no larger than a grain of sand. That debris ends up in the Earth’s atmosphere approximately 100 kilometers above our heads. Due to the high speeds, the air at the front of such a grit particle is compressed, heated and made to glow. We see that as a flash.
Source: Heaven.observe.com