This is a main stream media announcement. I am interested in this since the Mp made a note of it as being spectacular. After this, there will not be much time until things begin to get interesting with Russia. I am guessing a few months tops after this:
New meteor shower could turn into a meteor storm
by Kevin Lollar, The (Fort Myers, Fla.) News-Press
Posted on May 15, 2014 at 12:45 PM
Coming to a circumpolar constellation
near you: An all-new, never-before-seen, awkwardly named meteor shower
that just might knock your astronomical socks off.
It's called the Camelopardalid meteor shower, and unlike annual
showers such as the Perseids and Leonids that have been occurring for
hundreds or thousands of years, it will occur for the first time the
night of May 23 and early morning of May 24.
A meteor shower happens when the Earth passes through debris left in
space by a comet (the Perseids, for example, are debris from Comet
Swift-Tuttle); the debris, little chunks of rock and other material,
burns up in the atmosphere to form what some people call shooting or
falling stars.
The Camelopardalids will be debris from Comet 209P/LINEAR, a very
dim comet that orbits the sun every five years. The comet was
discovered in 2004 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research project,
a partnership of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln
Laboratory, NASA and the U.S. Air Force.
But while the Earth has been passing through Swift-Tuttle debris to
create the Perseids for thousands of years (the first written account of
the shower was in 36 A.D.), this will be the first time the Earth has
passed through Comet 209P/LINEAR's leftovers.
Meteor showers vary in intensity: Some produce more meteors than
others, and some years a particular meteor shower is better than other
years.
It all depends on how much debris the Earth passes through, and some
astronomers are predicting that all of Comet 209P/LINEAR's debris
trails from 1803 through 1924 will intersect Earth's orbit, so the
Camelopardalid meteor shower will be a meteor storm producing hundreds
of meteors per hour.
So, how good will it be?
"That's always a good question, more so with this meteor shower
because it's the first time we're seeing it," said Rich Talcott, senior
editor of Astronomy magazine. "Over the past 15 or 20 years,
astronomers have done a very good job at figuring out, 'OK, here's
where the debris streams will lie.' I'm thinking the odds are pretty
good we'll get something nice May 24."
Meteor showers are named for the constellation from which the
meteors seem to radiate. That point is known as the radiant, and
radiant for the Camelopardalids will be the constellation Camelopardalis
(the giraffe).
Camelopardalis is a circumpolar constellation, which means that,
rather than moving from east to west across the night sky, it goes
around Polaris, the North Star, so it's up all night.
It's also easy to find because it's close to the Big Dipper and Little Dipper, two easily recognizable constellations.
The meteor shower will be easier to view in the South, says Carol
Stewart, astronomer at the Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium in Fort
Myers, Fla.
"In Southwest Florida, we have an advantage over Northern latitudes
because the meteors will come in at us from a lower altitude," she
said. "Those are called 'Earth-grazers,' and they're longer-lasting and
run farther across the sky."
Aside from clouds, a meteor watcher's worst enemy is a bright moon, which can wash out all but the brightest meteors.
On the night of May 23, however, the moon is not present, and it
doesn't rise until 3:41 a.m. May 24. When it does rise, it will be a
waning crescent, so it won't affect the meteor shower.
Astronomers predict peak activity for the shower will be from 2 a.m.
to 4 a.m. May 24, but Stewart will be looking at a wider window.
"They could start as soon as it gets dark the night of the 23rd,"
she said. "I'm going to go out and check every hour. We don't know
because this is the first time, and I don't want to miss it."
No comments:
Post a Comment