The crystal clear sky sparkled with constellations as small groups of stargazers huddled together on the dark, cold hillside at Clinton Lake.

“Oh! Did you see that?” a female voice rang out, followed by a few laughs from her friends.

“I saw that one,” another voice said about 50 feet away.

“OHHH,” more voices said together, followed by muffled happy conversation.

Huddled in small groups, about 30 people were looking up to the sky about 4:30 a.m. Tuesday on the south side of a hill at the Clinton Lake overlook area.

Bundled up against the cold, they had come out to see what astronomers predicted would be the best Leonid meteor shower for the next 97 years. While a few brought cameras, most just came out to watch the natural fireworks show with the naked eye.

And they weren’t disappointed — about every minute or so, another white hot meteor would flame out across the sky for maybe a second, maybe less, before disappearing in the atmosphere.

“I wanted to see the shooting stars,” said Kayla Huffman, a Kansas University junior from Lawrence. “I’m really fascinated by them. I like to see the ones that have the big red streak after them.”

Bundled up against the 40-degree weather, Huffman joined a group of other KU students from the Delta Gamma sorority, who arrived about 4 a.m. for the stargazing show.

“We saw about 10 really big ones and then, a lot of really small, really faint ones,” Huffman said. “It was good to come out on this hill.”

Several other members of the sorority also enjoyed the early morning activity.

“It was really cool. I hadn’t ever seen anything like it. It was definitely worth the trip,” said Kasey Stark, a KU sophomore.

Katie Domet, a junior, said she didn’t really know what to expect.

“It was really neat,” Domet said. “It was totally worth the effort. And I saw a lot more than I thought we were going to see. “

Maggie Lee, a junior from Leawood, said the meteor shower was “amazing.”

“I thought we had a really great view of all the stars and it’s better than we would have been able to see in town,” she said. “It was a lot of fun and we had a good time.”