Astronomy Picture of the Day

Explanation: Just last week this long lovely Leonid shower meteor arced through the night. Captured on November 17/18 by photographer Bob Yen, the meteor trail spans about 70 times the apparent diameter of the full moon in the skies above Mt. Wilson, California, USA. The Leonid's path flashes from the outskirts of constellation Gemini to the triangle-shaped head of Taurus (lower right). Of course, the trail points back toward Leo, the shower's eponymous radiant, while passing near such night sky notables as galactic star cluster M35 (upper left) and Taurus's brightest star, red giant Aldebaran. Though the sky was ruled by a bright but waning Moon and brilliant Jupiter, the Leonid meteor shower still awed observers at dark sky locations with peak rates of hundreds of meteors per hour.