The Leonid meteor shower will make its annual appearance early Tuesday and Wednesday mornings.
The shower is caused by debris from the comet Tempel-Tuttle.
The Leonids are one of the more prominent annual meteor showers, said William Newman, UCLA professor of planetary physics, astronomy and applied mathematics.
“Earth’s orbit intersects with the comet’s orbit,” Newman said.
“(This) guarantees that (the meteor shower) happens at the same time of the year and it will appear to come at us from the same point of the sky,” he added.
The name Leonid is given to this shower because it appears in the area of the constellation Leo.
The best viewing area will be the northern part of campus, said William Moore, associate researcher at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at UCLA.
“Get as far away from sources of light as possible,” he said, and added that binoculars are not an effective way to view the shower.
Astronomy graduate student Kevin Hainline said the astronomy department was too busy to plan a viewing event for the shower.
Compiled by Marcus Torrey, Bruin contributor.