Meteor Burst - Credit: NASA
If you live in the Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East area, then keep watching the clock for 17-18:00 UTC when you may be in the right place at the right time for a burst of activity from the annual Draconid Meteor Shower. There’s a possibility you might see up to 1,000 meteors an hour! [click to continue…]
Originally posted by and full credit to Spaceweather.com
On October 8th, Earth will pass through a network of dusty filaments shed by Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner. Forecasters expect the encounter to produce anywhere from a few dozen to a thousand meteors per hour visible mainly over Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East. The meteors will stream from the northern constellation Draco–hence their name, the “Draconids.”
Peak rates should occur between 1600 UT and 2200 UT (noon – 6 pm EDT) as Earth grazes a series of filaments nearly intersecting our planet’s orbit. Analysts at the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office prepared this plot showing how the meteor rate is likely to vary:
If the maximum around 1900 UT reaches 1000 meteors per hour, the 2011 Draconids will be classified as a full-fledged meteor storm. The question is, will anyone see it? Bright moonlight over Europe, Africa and the Middle East will reduce the number of visible meteors 2- to 10-fold. The situation is even worse in North America where the shower occurs in broad daylight.
One way to enjoy the Draconids, no matter where you live, is to listen to them. The Air Force Space Surveillance Radar will be scanning the skies over the USA during the shower. When a Draconid passes through the radar beam–ping!–there will be an echo. Tune in to Space Weather Radio for live audio.
A similar system, still employing the radio reflection method displays meteors coming in on your computer in the form of a live graph – Meteor Live View
In Europe, an international team of scientists plans to observe the shower from airplanes flying at ~30,000 feet where the thin air reduces the impact of lunar glare. In Bishop, California, a team of high school students will launch an experimental helium balloon to higher altitudes, 100,000 feet or more, where the sky is black even at noon. Cameras in the balloon’s payload might catch some Draconid fireballs during the peak hours of the outburst.
Stay tuned for updates as Earth approaches the debris zone.
Originally posted on Universe Today by meteorwatch
Credit: NASA
The Draconids are coming! Will this meteor shower produce a storm of observable meteors, or just a minor squall? The Draconid Meteor Show should begin on October 8, 2011 starting at dusk (roughly 19:00 BST) and continue through the evening. Peak activity of this normally minor and quiet shower is estimated to be at 21:00 BST (20:00 UT). There seems to be a wide range of predictions for this year’s shower, but some astronomers believe there could be up to 1,000 meteors per hour, making this a meteor storm!
(more…)
Originally posted on Dark Sky Diary by Steve Owens @Darkskyman on twitter
On Saturday 8 October 2011 a rare event may occur – a meteor storm! The usually sedate Draconids meteor shower only produces a few shooting stars per hour in most years, but in some years we have a meteor storm, and that’s just what’s predicted for this year.
It Won't Look Like This
During a meteor storm the Earth passes through a particularly dense clump of comet dust, meaning that rates of shooting stars temporarily spike, and estimates this time suggest the possibility of up to 10 shooting stars per minute during the peak of the storm. However a nearly full Moon may spoil the view, possibly drowning out all but the brightest meteors, reducing the actual observed rate perhaps 1 per minute – still well worth looking out for.
The peak is set to occur at 2000UT (2100 BST), and is ideally placed for observers in the UK. Activity is expected to increase from 1600UT (1700 BST) but at that stage the sky will still be bright in the UK.
If you’re keen to witness this (possibly) amazing event here are some top tips:
Make sure you tell your friends! This a great opportunity to see a very rare meteor storm, so get as many people as possible outside and looking up.
CAVEAT: This is only a predicted meteor storm; it may not occur and if it doesn’t meteor levels will be very low.
2011 Perseid+Jupiter Credit: David Dickinsen
Sure, you’ve heard of the August Perseids that come blazing across the sky and are invariably trumpeted by the news as the “Meteor Shower of the Millennium!” on a yearly basis. Perhaps you’ve even heard of the Leonids, normally a feeble November shower prone to legendary outbursts roughly every 33 years. But have you ever heard of the October Draconids?
I’ll admit I hadn’t until the October 1998 issue of Sky & Telescope arrived on my doorstep. Or should I say tent-flap? You see, the last half of 1998 found me deployed with my U.S. Air Force squadron to Al Jaber, Kuwait. In those days, email (and spam) were still a hip “new thing,” giant washing-machine-like CRT monitors adorned many office desks, and we were involved with a cat-and-mouse game between Saddam and the U.N. Inspectors that eventually became the shooting war of Operation Desert Fox. A military base in the desert was also a fine place to do some causal astronomy. The Leonids put on a fine show that year approaching storm levels of 1,000 per hour from our longitude. I remember mentioning the Leonid meteors to one of our F-16 pilots, and they later briefed not to mistake the fireball flashes for Iraqi AAA (an important distinction!) (more…)
