New Meteor Shower Could Be Big

Friday/Saturday May 23rd/24th 

       The astronomy community has been abuzz with the potential major meteor shower Saturday morning that might turn into a fantastic cosmic storm.

       Any time after sunset Friday May 23 and sunrise Saturday May 24, fragments of an ancient comet will be bombarding Earth for the first time, and the predictions range from 10 to 10,000 meteors an hour!

       Once again the unpredictability of celestial events has created an excitement that will play out as the laws of physics takes Earth through a stream of tiny rocks crossing our orbit. 

       Like looking out a car window at night in a snowstorm, the comet debris seems to radiate out of a point in space—like snowflakes in headlights of the moving car.

       The dust of comet P209/LINEAR has finally crossed into the path of Earth, barreling along its 800 million mile solar orbit at 30,000 mph.  This comet was discovered in 2004, but has been around since the 1800s in a five-year orbit that loops around the Earth and back to the Sun.

Lyrid Meteor Shower April 22, 2012  (NASA All Sky Camera)

       The May Camelopardalids have not occurred before, and they will emanate out of the constellation called the Giraffe.  This will be good as Camelopardalis is an indistinct star pattern in the north between the Big and Little Dippers—so it will be visible all night long. It is just an illusion that the meteors radiate out of the giraffe, that’s just the direction in space we are plowing through.

       The predictions come from the top meteor researchers in the world and range from 20 an hour (very respectable) to 200 a minute (a meteor storm!).

Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Center (LINEAR), NASA and the US Air Force are partners in surveying the skies for comets and asteroids that could be hazardous to our planet.  Comet 209/LINEAR is just one of hundreds of objects under surveillance.

        In fact, there are 1,470 Near Earth Objects (NEA) being watched that might someday hit the Earth, and that number changes monthly.  Gravity interactions with our Moon and other planets might alter the predicted orbit, sending a harmless asteroid or comet into a collision course with Earth.

       Asteroids don’t trail debris as they are rocky bodies from a few thousand feet to a few miles in size.  Comets are bodies of rock and ice that have their surfaces stripped when warmed up as their orbit is nearest the Sun, called perihelion. The solar wind blows two tails away from the Sun, one of gases from the ice and the other of solid debris. A comet refreezes as it heads to the farthest point from the Sun, called aphelion.

       Comet P209/LINEAR isn’t passing by Earth, it’s on the other side of the Sun.  But Earth is intersecting the debris field of the comet’s orbit, which is above and below the plane of our solar orbit.  

A couple times a month the Earth encounters debris from other comets, but most of the time there isn’t much left. But there are still some thick streams of cosmic dust left, and they create the famous and reliable meteor showers of the Lyrids, Geminids and Perseids.

Most meteors are tiny, the size of sand grains. They disintegrate from the friction of the Earth’s atmosphere when slamming into us at thousands of miles an hour.  The energy is released as light, and sometimes there is a smoky trail called a train. When a big meteor, maybe the size of a small rock, strikes the atmosphere it can explode in several blasts, light the sky and even have sound.  These are called bolides, and are being captured nearly weekly on security cameras around the world.

Debris in space is called a meteoroid, when in the Earth’s atmosphere like a “shooting star” it’s a meteor and when found on the ground it’s a meteorite.  Incredibly, some 10 tons lands on Earth everyday—that’s 20,000 pounds of cosmic debris!

And, of course, larger pieces of meteoroids—some weighing tons—have made it through the atmosphere intact, often creating craters when hitting the ground.

The potential Camelopardalis Meteor Shower will be fun to watch as the shooting stars draw attention to the circumpolar constellations of the two bears, Cassiopeia the Queen, Draco the Dragon and Cepheus the King.  

The ancient Greeks believed in an animal that was had the head of a camel and spots of a leopard—a camel-leopard.  A “new” constellation drawn up by faint stars between Ursa Major and Cassiopeia, it first appeared in star charts in a 1624 book by the German mathematician Jakob Bartsch, a son-in-law of the great astronomer-mathematician Johannes Kepler.  

You don’t need any special equipment to observer a meteor shower, just patience and some creature comforts to get you though the long hours of surveying the night sky. 

Some of the essential equipment is lawn chairs, a light blanket, refreshments, snacks and maybe a radio.  Star charts, a red flashlight to read them and a pair of binoculars will help you learn the stars and constellations and some of the celestial treasures they contain. Meteor watching can be a great time to test the waters of the hobby, and see if the astronomy bug bites.

Photography of meteors is not easy, but you might catch a few if you have a camera that can have its shutter open for 10 minutes or longer.  Set the camera on a tripod, chose an ISO sensitivity of 800 or more, and set the time exposure.  The stars will trail as they move in the sky, and the meteors will be bright streaks of light.  Capturing a meteor with a camera is tough, but worth a try while your eyes record the fleeting streaks of light.

Stay up all night this Friday, May 23, or set your alarm clock for 2-3 am on Saturday May 24 to catch a falling star.  If the skies are clear, you won’t be disappointed.