Possible new Meteor Shower - This Friday/Saturday!
SSPforum] Digest Number 558
SSPforum@yahoogroups.com
To: SSPforum@yahoogroups.com
Posted by: dduncan@colorado.edu valentinozippysophia
Date: Thu May 22, 2014 1:13 pm ((PDT))
Chance of a New Meteor Shower
Dr. Douglas Duncan
Director, Fiske Planetarium, Univ. of Colorado
Just after midnight this Friday night, or early Saturday morning, Colorado [and throughought the US - just adjust your time zone!] residents may get to witness a rare astronomical event – the birth of a new meteor shower. Meteor showers occur when the earth passes through the orbit of a comet. Comet orbits are usually strewn with bits of ice and rock, and when the earth hits them at a speed which is typically 30 miles per second, they burn up at high speed in earth’s atmosphere. Most meteors, which some people call “shooting stars,” are actually only the size of a pea, or even smaller.
A number of meteor showers are well known, such as the “Perseid” meteors that are seen every Aug. 11, 12, and 13. However, a brand new meteor shower is possible. In 2004 an automated telescope run for NASA by MIT discovered a comet. This Saturday, around 1:30 Mountain Time, the earth will pass through the orbit of this comet, whose name is LINEAR. How many meteors will be seen is highly uncertain. “It could be a few dozens, or it could be hundreds,” says Fiske Planetarium Director and CU astronomer Douglas Duncan. Since even the chance of a new meteor shower is so rare, Duncan plans to camp out that night. “The sizes and distribution of particles along the comet’s path isn’t known, so it pays to watch from midnight onwards, not just at 1:30 am.” If you trace back the streaks of the meteors, they are expected to radiate from a point above the northern horizon, to the right of the position of the Big Dipper at 1:30 am. However, they are expected to streak all across the sky.
“A dark sky is critical for seeing any meteor shower,” Duncan says. “In the city you might see one or two, in the suburbs 5 or 6, but up in the mountains 50 in an hour.”
CU’s Fiske Planetarium will have presentations on Thursday and Friday nights that will include discussion of the possible new meteor shower. The Fiske planetarium lobby has a large, 4.6 million year old meteorite that you can touch. For details visit
http://fiske.colorado.edu http://fiske.colorado.edu or call 303-492-5002.