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A bright Leonid meteor streaks through the sky.
credit: Navicore/WikiMedia Commons
In this episode, Dave Eicher invites you to observe the what happens when our planet, during its journey around the Sun, runs into a stream of particles in its orbit. Such an event is called a meteor shower, and because the streaks of light from these meteors seem to all come from a point in the constellation Leo the Lion, astronomers call it the Leonids. This meteor shower peaks on November 17.