Meteor shower best before dawn on May 5
(Credit: Steve Quirk's Frog Rock Observatory, Robert H. McNaught (SSO).)
Friday, May 2, 2008
The annual Eta Aquarid meteor shower is lighting up the hours before dawn around now.
You can expect the greatest numbers of Eta Aquarid meteors on Monday morning before dawn. But – because these meteors have a relatively broad maximum – you can look for the Eta Aquarids on any clear morning before dawn this weekend, too.
The Eta Aquarid meteors are strictly for night owls or early risers. This shower doesn’t start until around 2 or 3 a.m. The meteors are few and far between at that hour, but the wee hours are a time for catching earth-grazing meteors. An earth-grazer is a long, slow, colorful meteor that horizontally streaks the sky.
The closer to dawn, the more Eta Aquarid meteors you’re likely to see. These meteors are extremely fast and often bright, striking Earth’s atmosphere at 66 kilometers – about 41 miles – per second. Many of the brighter meteors leave persistent trains – glowing ionized gas trails – for a few moments after their fiery plunge.
To recap, the Eta Aquarid meteors will probably be at their best during the predawn hours Monday. If you plan to watch them, you’ll want a dark, wide open sky – a reclining lawn chair – and you’ll want to look generally in an eastward direction. That’s where the radiant point for this shower – in the constellation Aquarius the Water Bear – will rise. At mid-northern latitudes, expect 10 to 20 meteors per hour. South of the equator, you might see twice that many!
NEW! Find related content with Sphere
About 10 years ago, I was camping at NY’s Wellesly Island State Park in the Thousand Islands. This area has almost non-existent light pollution (the closest cities are over 2 hours away), extremely good air quality, and long and low horizons (especially to the west where you are basically looking over the length of Lake Ontario). Of course, this all adds up to incredible star gazing.
On this particular mid-August night, there was a fairly active meteor shower going on. At 1:00 am, the family was asleep and I was alone at the river’s edge, marveling at all the beauty, the reflections of the stars on the still, black, water and the cloudless sky. Suddenly, a brilliant meteor appeared to my extreme right and shot across the sky, horizontally in a long low path, burning for at least 5 seconds, with a long colorful tail and “spilling” sparks of color all along it’s path. I went to bed feeling particularly blessed.
The next morning, I described it to my family as having the same appearance as Tinkerbell’s magic wand at the beginning of a Walt Disney production. Nobody actually believed me of course.
Now I know that what I saw is termed an “earth-grazer” and you can BE SURE that I am sharing this article with the doubters.
Perhaps I will see another one, someday, and maybe someone else will be awake with me to verify that it wasn’t just the wine :-)
Thank you so much for this report – well, for all of them- but this one in particular. I am vindicated!
Yours,
Stephen Nagle
PS. Do meteors like these strike the earth? Is it possible that this one plunged into the water?
Stephen,
Thank you for sharing your earthgrazer meteor story with the Earth & Sky audience! Since it was middle August, good chance this meteor was part of the Perseid shower.
Astronomers claim that meteors in meteor showers are too flimsy to survive the trip through Earth’s atmosphere and to land on the Earth’s surface as a meteorite. (For the most part, shower meteors are bits and pieces of comets.) Most meteorites are thought to be asteroid fragments – or in some instances, fragments of the moon or Mars.
By the way, my wife Alice and I have been to Wellesley Island State Park numerous times. We have given star walks, and hands-on astronomy programs, such as sundial-making and sextant-making workshops. Wellesley Island is a beautiful spot and great for stargazing!
Hope you can catch another earthgrazer!
Best,
Bruce