Re: When Will the Earth Be Passing through a Astroid belt

I think what you heard about is not the Earth passing through the Asteroid Belt but through the debris from a comet. The Asteroid Belt is located between Mars and Jupiter, about 2.6 billion miles from the Sun or about 2.5 billion miles from the Earth. As you can see we are not going to be passing through it. We will be passing through the debris from two comets in the next few weeks though. As comets pass through the solar system they leave trails of rocks and dust behind them. Around the 5th of November the Earth will pass through the debris from Comet Encke. As the peices of rock and dust impact with our atmosphere they heat up due to friction (rub your hands together). We call the resulting celestial specticle the Taurid meteor shower.

While the Taurid meteor shower will be interesting, I expect what you heard about will be the arrival of the Leonid meteor shower around November 17th. This display of celestial fireworks is associated with Comet Temple-Tuttle, which made its closest approach to the Sun last winter. Since the amount of debris should be quite large, the show may be quite impressive. The display will be visable all over the world so you should be all set. You'll want to get up early on the morning of the 17th, 3 am would be a good time and look into the constellation Leo. You should soon see small points of light with tails showering down.

To learn more about meteor showers in general visit http://astro.nmsu.edu/~maddison/A105/latex/notes/march/asteroid 1/asteroid1.html . You can also find out more about the Leonids at http://www.a zscience.org/PLANETARIUM/11-98-leonids.html .