Ask A Scientist© Astronomy Archive

Author:      acespades
When will there be another meteor shower as great as this summer 1993?

Response #:  1 of 1 
Author:      rcwinther
I hope that those people who did see the Perseids were not disappointed; I
felt that the press had over-hyped this event.  Here in Iowa we had cloudy
skies so I did not get to see just how good this meteor shower was.  The
Perseid shower is usually one of the best of any given year; this one was
enhanced by the passage of its parent comet, Swift-Tuttle, which supplied
new material in 1992.  There are two more meteor showers, neither of them
expected to be particularly noteworthy:  the Orionid (peaks around October
23) and the Leonid (peaks around November 17).  The Orionid is due to debris
left by comet Halley.  If you want to look way ahead, the Leonid shower of
1998 or 1999 may be spectacular because of the passage of its parent comet,
Tempel-Tuttle, in February 1998.  The last time this comet recharged the
meteoric material was in 1965; the next year, observers on the West coast
witnessed a true meteor storm, with over 100 meteors per *second* in some
cases!