Thousands of shooting stars provided a dazzling light show Sunday that amazed veteran and novice stargazers alike as the Leonid meteor shower made the moonless sky appear to rain light.

At the peak of the early morning shower, as many as 1,250 meteors per hour streaked overhead.

About 150 Chinese who gathered at midnight on the roof of a 550-year-old Ming Dynasty stone observatory in Beijing were overjoyed when the first meteor tore across the sky leaving an ephemeral fiery trail in its wake.

``There are many more shooting stars than I expected, and they're really clear,'' said a 19-year-old construction engineering student.

Atop Mount Wilson (U.S.), hundreds of cars clogged the road leading to the observatory as stargazers sought out dark spots to watch the display.

Patty Ronney, 49, said she had never seen a single meteor before leaving home.

Streak after streak of light shot across the sky as tiny bits of comet debris burned up harmlessly in the atmosphere. The brightest flares left shimmering, smoky trails that hung in the sky for a few seconds.

Clear skies also rewarded more than 1,000 stargazers who sat on lawn chairs at a youth training camp near Seoul, South Korea.

The Leonid shower occurs each November, when the Earth's orbit takes it through the trail of particles shed by the Comet Tempel-Tuttle as it swings around the sun once every 33 years.

Most particles are smaller than a grain of rice. They enter our atmosphere traveling 45 miles a second and burn up in brilliant streaks of light. The meteors are called Leonids because they appear to come from the direction of the constellation Leo.

The last major Leonid shower occurred in 1966, when stargazers counted as many as 150,000 meteors per hour. Astronomers expect another such shower in 2099.

Comets are believed to contain pristine examples of the materials that coalesced 4.5 billion years ago to form our solar system. The frozen balls of ice and debris are rich with basic elements like iron, as well as carbon-based molecules.

(Agencies)