Visit Sunrise Sunset Calendars and check the astronomical twilight and moonrise and moonset boxes to learn these key elements. If you’re going this route, watching shortly before dawn Wednesday, don’t be afraid to start watching when the setting moon is still in the sky. Remember, when the moon is low in the sky – say, for half an hour to an hour before it sets – its glare will be reduced. Or try that brief interval between moonset and dawn. But you might see a particularly bright Leonid or two streaking across the sky. You won’t see as many as you would in a year with no moon. You can try watching for the meteors in moonlight. There will be only the briefest of intervals between moonset and the onset of morning dawn Wednesday morning. It will hang around most the night, brightening the sky and washing out most of the meteors. But the moon is in a waxing gibbous phase. In 2021, this meteor shower is due to peak Wednesday morning, November 17.

November’s Leonid meteor shower is known for periodic storms of historic proportions, when shooting stars fall like rain. If you trace all the “shooting stars” from the Leonid meteor shower backward, they appear to radiate from this area of the sky.

Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo the Lion, dots a backwards question mark of stars known as the Sickle.

Temple of the dark moon