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Enjoy a Nice Shower
Comets >
It's that time of the year again. It's the middle of November, the time that astronomers, young and old, await the return of the annual Leonid meteor shower.
Every 33 years or so, the Leonids hit with a vengeance, sometimes producing meteor storms in which thousands of meteors grace the sky every hour. For the last three years the Leonids were predicted to be spectacular --- and in many places in the world they were.
But they haven't been too favorable to us in Southern California. They provided a beautiful display of meteors to those fortunate to have clear skies, to be sure, but for the most part they were just good showers, not awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping storms.
Will this year be different? It might be, if certain astronomer-prognosticators are correct in their predictions.
A meteor shower is the result of a collision. This collision involves 1) debris shed from a comet as it goes around the sun, and 2) the Earth's atmosphere.
Comets, as they get close to the warm sun, slough off some of their dust and dirt. The dust and dirt debris travels with the parent comet as it orbits the sun, spreading out as it goes.
If our orbit happens to intersect the comet orbit we either slam into the comet (dangerous and ugly!) or its trails of dust (safe and pretty!).
If we plunge through the debris, the little specks of dirt appear to fly through our atmosphere with great speed, tens to hundreds of them an hour, vaporizing in a flash of light we call a meteor.
There is a comet called Tempel-Tuttle whose orbit nearly crosses ours. We cross "paths" on the 17th of November every year. Normally this means an "OK," but not spectacular, meteor shower.
But when Tempel-Tuttle itself actually passes through our neck of the woods every 33 years or so, its debris train in our vicinity is pretty thick and we can plunge right through a pretty dirty part of it causing the skies light up with meteors.
Well, even though the Comet passed by a few years ago the scuttlebutt in astro circles is that this year's shower might surprise us with a fairly hefty amount of meteors. Several reliable meteor astronomers have worked out that there is very likely a cloud of debris left over from Tempel-Tuttle's 1766 fly-by that is on a collision course with our planet.
That's great news for meteor watchers just in itself. But it gets better!
If these astronomers are correct, one of the thicker parts of the cloud of cosmic crud will hit over North America during its nighttime - about 2 o'clock in the morning of the 18th for those of us on the West Coast. And, there will be no blinding Moon to interfere.
And there was much rejoicing.
So, despite the inherent uncertainty of this phenomenon, I'll go out on a cosmic limb and say this: Pray for clear skies. Dress warmly. Go out in the late night of the 17th and into the early morning of the 18th to somewhere extra dark. Bring bug spray and binoculars. Lie down on something comfortable. Look up and enjoy a nice shower. It should be spectacular.
(Image obtained from the Astronomy Picture of the Day, 2001 November 4. Photo credit: Juraj Toth [Comenius U. Bratislava], Modra Observatory)
Posted by Administrator at 2001.11.10 08:06 AM | Comments (0)
