The Leonid meteor shower did little to dazzle stargazing students in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Many students stayed up until as late as 5 a.m. to watch the meteor shower at its peak. But many of those students said it definitely did not live up to its hype.
Junior Brett Whitney said he watched the shower from outside his dorm at Spencer Hall but was not impressed.
"It was kind of like a few little streaks every once in awhile," Whitney said. "There was maybe three or four in an hour."
Students said they watched the sky from other locations on campus, including Ehringhaus field and Kenan Stadium.
Dan Reichart of the physics and astronomy department said meteor showers like the Leonid occur as remnants of comets burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.
"The Earth was passing through the leftovers of a comet that passed by a long time ago," Reichart said
"The particles are only microns wide, but they give off an immense amount of energy as they burn up."
Reichart said the astronomy department didn't do any special monitoring or recording of the meteor shower, and he personally didn't watch it.
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