Invader_Xan
Joined: 02 May 2007
Posts: 540
Location: In Space
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 Posted: Fri 31st Aug, 2007 7:07 pm Post subject: The Aurigid Meteor Shower |
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Please excuse the cross-forum posting, but I thought you guys might be interested in this. 
Link!
If the weather's good later, keep an eye on the sky.
The Aurigid meteor shower peaks later tonight -- a rare shower of blue-ish meteors that's only seen once or twice every century!
Plus, because of the stuff these meteors are made from, they should fall a lot deeper into the atmosphere, so you might see longer streaks from shooting stars.
Though (as always) you'll be able to see them in all parts of the sky, they'll appear to be coming from the constellation of Auriga -- see below  .
| New Scientist wrote: | The Aurigids come from a comet that takes 2000 years to orbit the Sun.
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The best view of the meteors will be from the west coast of North America, before dawn on 1 September. Based on past showers, there should be up to 200 bright meteors visible per hour, and they may have an unusual blue-green colour. |
Technically you should be able to see some anytime now. The time it mentions in that article is just the peak of the shower. Meteor showers usually last a few days either side of the peak time. This one, seeing as it's such a rare one, maybe only a couple of days in total.
The constellation of Auriga is A bit North of Orion and a little to the West of Cassiopeia (quite near Polaris & looks kinda like a letter W). A helpful landmark for spotting Auriga is the star Capella -- one of the bright ones (also always visible in the Northern Hemisphere). Together with 4 others it forms kind of pentagon shape.
From the UK, it'll be East by North East, quite low to the horizon around midnight and it should rise to the middle of the sky by about 6am (in case anyone has insomnia).
For anyone in Northern Europe or Canada/Northern America just offset those times to your time zone (Auriga won't set until 2pm GMT).
Happy stargazing!  |
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