After the first hour they spent atop Arizona's Kitt Peak scanning the post- midnight skies, the observers knew that their ascent to an altitude of more than 6,000 ft. had not been in vain. They had counted 33 shooting stars, the advance guard of the annual Leonid meteor shower. But none of the University of Arizona students could anticipate the spectacle that was still to come. In the small hours of that Nov. 17 morning in 1966, the fiery meteors began streaking overhead in ever increasing numbers until, as one viewer reported in Sky & Telescope magazine, "the sky began raining...
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