Tag: Meteors & Meteor Showers

Perseid meteor shower returns to our skies this month to kick off summer ‘shooting star’ season

NeRD

Anyone gazing at the summer night sky for even a short length of time is likely to spot a few “shooting stars” darting across the sky.  The best meteor display of the summer comes during the second week of August during the annual Perseid meteor shower which, at its peak around the nights of Aug. 11 and 12, is capable of producing 50 to 100 fast, bright meteors per hour for a single observer. Many flaring meteors with trains are seen under good skies. 2024 will be a very good…

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The Quadrantid meteor shower 2024 peaks tonight alongside a bright moon

NeRD

Early each January, the Quadrantid meteor stream provides one of the most intense annual meteor displays, with a brief, sharp maximum lasting only a few hours.  The Quadrantid meteor shower actually radiate from the northeast corner of the constellation of Boötes, the Herdsman, so we might expect them to be called the “Boötids.” But back in the late-18th century there was a constellation here called “Quadrans Muralis,” the “Mural or Wall Quadrant” (an astronomical instrument). Quadrans Muralis is a long-obsolete star pattern, invented in 1795 by J.J. Lalande to commemorate…

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Quadrantid meteor shower 2024: The year’s 1st meteor shower blazes over North America on Jan. 3

NeRD

The Quadrantid meteor shower will peak this week and could bring up to 120 shooting stars per hour to the night sky. It has the potential to be the strongest meteor shower of 2024, according to the American Meteor Society, but with such a short peak — just six hours — the shower’s climax can often occur in daylight. This year, the predicted peak is 7:53 a.m. EST (12:53 GMT) on Jan. 4, according to EarthSky. That makes the pre-dawn hours — from around 4:53 a.m. EST to dawn —…

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See the Geminid meteor shower 2023 light up the sky in these amazing photos

NeRD

The Geminid meteor shower stunned in its first of two peak nights in 2023. Photos from around the world showed Geminid meteors streaking through the sky overnight on Wednesday (Dec. 13), and more “shooting stars” are expected on Thursday (Dec. 14). The new moon, only two days old, should allow for peaks of as much as 100 meteors per hour this year, according to SpaceWeather.com. Webcasts are also available to check out the show if you can’t get outside or you’re clouded out. Both the the Slooh telescope network and…

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Debris from a near-Earth comet could create new meteor shower this week

NeRD

Earth may experience an entirely new meteor shower this December when our planet enters a stream of the debris left around the sun by a near-Earth comet. These meteors will appear to stream from the direction of the star Lambda-Sculptoris, meaning a potential name for this meteor shower is the “Lambda-Sculptorids.” The progenitor of the potential new meteor shower is Comet 46P/Wirtanen, which was discovered in 1948 and orbits the sun every 5.4 years, much more rapidly than other comets, such as Halley’s Comet  —  which takes around 75 years…

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