While director of the Ahmedabad-based Physical Research Laboratory Girish Agrawal and Space Applications Centre director B S Bhatia confirmed the spectacle would be visible from parts of the State, senior professor Dr Narendra Bhandari told Express Newsline said such a phenomenon happened once in 33 years.

According to Bhandari, though shooting stars were a common enough sight -- there is one every hour -- the Templetuttle comet produced a few thousands of shooting stars every hour once it exploded in the leonid direction from the sun.

This celestial event lit up the skies throughout the world, Bhandari said, adding that the sightings would be much better away from the smog-filled skies of the cities. In Gujarat, he added, the explosion would be best visible in the remote, sparsely inhabited areas of Kutch.

Former senior professor at PRL J N Desai, however, said there was a faint chance the phenomenon would not occur at all this year. ``But if so, it'll definitely take place next year'', he said.

Other officials said that scientists were studying chances of comet debris affecting Indian satellites.