[5] The Leonids get their name from the location of their radiant in the constellation Leo: the meteors appear to radiate from that point in the sky.

The streams consist of solid particles, known as meteoroids, normally ejected by the comet as its frozen gases evaporate under the heat of the Sun once within Jupiter's orbit.

Due to the retrograde orbit of 55P/Tempel–Tuttle, the Leonids are fast moving streams which encounter the path of Earth and impact at 70 km/s (43 mi/s).

[3] Larger Leonids which are about 10 mm (0.4 in) across have a mass of 0.5 g (0.02 oz) and are known for generating bright (apparent magnitude −1.5) meteors.

The event was marked by several nations of Native Americans: the Cheyenne established a peace treaty[14] and the Lakota calendar was reset.

[24] The journalism of the event tended to rise above the partisan debates of the time and reviewed facts as they could be sought out.

[27] Joseph Smith, the founder and first leader of Mormonism, afterwards noted in his journal for November 1833 his belief that this event was "a litteral [sic] fulfillment of the word of God" and a harbinger of the imminent second coming of Christ.

[40] The sodium tail of the Moon tripled just after the 1998 Leonid shower which was composed of larger meteoroids (which in the case of the Earth was witnessed as fireballs).

Whereas previously it was hazardous to guess if there would be a storm or little activity, the predictions of Asher and McNaught timed bursts in activity down to ten minutes by narrowing down the clouds of particles to individual streams from each passage of the comet, and their trajectories amended by subsequent passage near planets.

However, whether a specific meteoroid trail will be primarily composed of small or large particles, and thus the relative brightness of the meteors, was not understood.

[41] Viewing campaigns resulted in spectacular footage from the 1999, 2001, and 2002 storms which produced up to 3,000 Leonid meteors per hour.

The 1833 storm was not due to the recent passage of the comet, but from a direct impact with the previous 1800 dust trail.

[49] However, a close encounter with Jupiter is expected to perturb the comet's path, and many streams, making storms of historic magnitude unlikely for many decades.