HEADS UP! Meteor Shower

HEADS UP! Meteor Shower

by Serendipitous | Published on January 3rd, 2008, 11:42 am | Life

Wow... I actually found out about a meteor shower BEFORE it happens!

Must-See Meteor Shower Friday Morning

The Quadrantid meteor shower is due to reach maximum in the predawn hours of Friday, Jan. 4. The Quadrantids are notoriously unpredictable, but if any year promises a fine display, this could be it.

The Quadrantid Meteor Shower

The Quadrantids are a meteor shower.

The Name comes from Quadrans Mulralis an obsolete constellation.

The Quadrantid meteor shower is one of the year's biggest, in a regular basis producing 80 meteors per hour. But it is rarely noticed. Why?

One cause is weather. The shower has its extremum in January when northern skies are cold.

The shower's radiant is located very high in the northern sky, so observers in the southern hemisphere, see almost nothing.

The best day to see the Quadrantids is January 3rd. The peak hours are from nightfall to midnight.

The next step is to get my sorry arse out of bed...

I'll have to give it a shot. I'm usually up at 4:00 or so, so I should have a pretty easy time of it. And the weather will be perfect for viewing. Coolness!

The shower lasts from the 1st to the 5th peaking on the 3 & 4 th. You will be able to see it any time after dark. Last night they were showing up at about 30/hr, tonight should be good too.

A Person wrote:The shower lasts from the 1st to the 5th peaking on the 3 & 4 th. You will be able to see it any time after dark. Last night they were showing up at about 30/hr, tonight should be good too.

That's good to know! There's a stronger likelihood that I would check it out BEFORE going to bed than trying to get out of a warm bed to take a look.

This is where to look - they will appear to radiate from a point below Ursa Major (Big Dipper)

A Person wrote:This is where to look - they will appear to radiate from a point below Ursa Major (Big Dipper)

"Below" is such an inelegant directive for a circumpolar constellation. If your diagram is how the sky will look at 9:00 PM, then by 3:00 AM, the direction will be "to the right of the Big Dipper," IIRC

Quite right. Inelegant is a polite way of saying inaccurate. The position of the radiant will stay the same relative to Polaris and the Big Dipper (and other stars). The whole sky will appear to rotate.

However for most of the night the radiant will be below Polaris and the Big Dipper and quite low on the horizon.

If you draw an 'hour hand from the pointers on the BD to Polaris, and knowing the date you can tell that this chart was drawn for around 01:00 in the morning

Anyone observe the show last night / this morning?

Turned out pretty cloudy where I live so I didn't see anything last night.