This 25-minute exposure on the night of Nov. 17, 1966, shows just a few of the thousands of Leonids that rained down on North American. Credit: Tom Kirby and Tom Pope, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
On Nov. 17, 1966, the Leonids put on one of the greatest meteor shows in recorded history, during which eyewitnesses reported a sky that seemed to “rain shooting stars.” Observers in North America witnessed a peak of thousands of meteors per minute; Kitt Peak National Observatory reported 40 meteors per second. This peak occurred around 12:00 Universal Time, and lasted for about 15 to 20 minutes. As the requisite rate of 1,000 meteors per hour was not just met but superseded dozens of times over, the event was firmly classified as a true meteor storm.
