2001 Leonids: Meteors in Perspective

Explanation: The 2001 Leonid storm was so intense that the meteor shower's radiant, the point on the sky from which the fleeting trails seemed to diverge , was easy to spot. But the bits of debris that created the meteors really moved along parallel paths, following the orbit of their parent comet Tempel-Tuttle . Their apparent divergence from the shower's radiant point was simply due to perspective as skygazers looked toward the stream of cosmic debris. During the 2001 Leonid storm , while the radiant was above the horizon from SoBaekSan Observatory in South Korea, astronomer Christophe Marlot made this single time exposure recording star trail arcs and a number of meteors. Since Marlot was looking away from the cosmic debris stream, this perspective actually shows red tinged meteor trails converging toward a point below the horizon and opposite the radiant -- the Leonid shower's antiradiant .