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If you look up at the night sky this week, you may be able to observe fast meteors and bright fireballs from two meteor showers that will reach their peak around the same time.
The Southern Delta Aquarids meteor shower will be most active from Monday night into early Tuesday morning, with up to 25 meteors per hour possible in some locations, the agency said. American Meteor SocietyAnd it rained a little on Tuesday night. Alpha Capricornids meteor shower Known for its bright fireball, the comet could produce a celestial event of up to five meteors per hour.
A fireball is defined as a meteor caused by a large object brighter than Venus and measuring more than one meter (more than three feet) in diameter. According to NASA:.
Meteor showers are debris left behind by comets and asteroids. Going Around the Sun Earth encounters every year At some point in orbit. Robert Lunsford, fireball reporting coordinator for the American Meteor Society, said the Southern Delta Aquarids’ debris trail is spread out, so roughly equal rates of meteors could occur in the days before and after the peak.
Wednesday night will be the best time to view both meteor showers, Lunsford said, as the moon will be waning, losing about 8% of its light each night. (Moonlight can interfere with visibility of fainter meteors.) On Monday, the moon will be about 34% full, and on Wednesday, the moon will be 16% full. According to NASA’s Daily Moon Guide:.
The best way to view the meteor shower is with just your bare eyes, without binoculars, telescopes or other equipment, so you can get a clear view of the entire sky, says Andrew Rivkin, a planetary astronomer and researcher at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Baltimore.
“Find a dark place with a view of the sky, preferably away from city lights, and get settled,” Rivkin says, recommending sitting outside for at least 10 to 15 minutes to allow your eyes to adjust to the dark.
The best time to see the meteors is around 4 a.m. local time, when the radiant point, the constellation from which the meteor showers originate, is highest in the sky, Lunsford said. Both meteor showers can be seen around the world, although in the Northern Hemisphere, the rate of meteors may be low, around 10 per hour. That’s because the radiant point is lower in the sky, he added.
Aquarius is the radiant point of the Southern Delta Aquarids meteor shower, and Capricornus is the radiant point of the Alpha Capricornids meteor shower, and both constellations will be visible next to each other in the southwestern part of the sky, Lunsford said.
“Even if we’re next to each other, Alpha “The Capricornids are much slower,” he said. The Southern Deltas are about 40 kilometers (25 miles) per second. According to NASA:It usually lasts for 0.5 seconds.
However, the Alpha Capricornids meteor shower is usually larger and likely to last at least a second, Lunsford added. “The Alpha Capricornids are not as powerful as the Delta Aquarids meteor shower to the south, maybe five per hour at most, but they are known for producing fireballs. So you might see four fairly weak fireballs per hour, followed by a bright, beautiful fireball that lasts for a few seconds.”
The peak of the Perseid meteor shower is still a few weeks away. Lunsford said the meteor shower will be visible along with other meteor showers that have been active in the night sky since mid-July on the evening of August 11. “You might only see a couple per hour, but they tend to be bright and very fast,” he said. “So if you’re starting to doze off, that’s going to really wake you up.”
A fireball streaked across the sky in broad daylight in early July over parts of northeastern US states, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, sparking excitement along the East Coast as meteor enthusiasts captured the unusual sight on camera.
“It’s a situation where the universe is coming to us. The universe is interacting with us in ways that we don’t normally think about,” Rivkin said. “We see the sun every day, we see the moon. They’re there, they’re kind of constant. Stars are constant, but meteors are something that aren’t normally there. … You may be the only person who can see a particular meteor. I think that makes them particularly special.”
here Remaining meteor showers It is expected to peak in 2024.
Perseid meteor shower: August 11-12
Draconoid: October 7-8
Orionid meteor shower: October 20-21
Southern Taurid meteor shower: November 4-5
Northern Taurids meteor shower: November 11-12
Leonid meteor shower: November 17-18
Geminids meteor shower: December 13-14
Urushid: December 21st-22nd
Remaining satellites in 2024
There are five more full moons this year. According to the Agriculture Yearbook.
August 19: Sturgeon Moon
September 17: Harvest Moon
October 17: Hunter’s Moon
November 15: Beaver Moon
December 15th: Cold Moon
