Early next Saturday morning, May 24, our skies could be ablaze with one heck of a meteor shower between 2 and 3 a.m. It may be even close to what's called a meteor storm.
These days, when anyone can easily write anything they want on the Internet and on Facebook, there's a lot of wild predictions out there, and a lot of it winds up being junk. In your cyber travels lately, you may have heard something about this coming meteor shower and had your doubts about its legitimacy. This looks like it could be the real thing, though.
Meteor showers occur when the Earth, in its orbit around the sun, plows into debris trails of dust, sand and pebbles left behind by melting comets. The individual bits of debris burn up in our atmosphere due to friction. When they slam in at speeds that can be more than 40 miles a second, they chemically excite the columns of air they come through, producing the multi-color streaks and a great show that's ours for the gazing.
Comets are basically the dirty snowballs of the solar system. They originate from the far outer reaches of the solar system in the Oort cloud.
Because of gravitational perturbations from nearby stars, these dirty cosmic snowballs can get directed toward our sun and wind up in highly elliptical orbits around our home star. The giant planet Jupiter and its gravitational tug can also have an effect on comet orbits. When they get close to the sun and the Earth, comets partially - sometimes totally - melt, releasing tons of potential meteors. Because of this, we Earthlings get to enjoy these annual shows.
Some meteor showers are better than others, though, especially the Perseids in August and the Geminids in December. In those showers, it's possible to see more than 50 meteors or "shooting stars" per hour on nights with dark skies and little or no moonlight. This new shower Saturday morning, called the Camelopardalids, could be equal to or maybe much more prosperous.
The parent comet for the Camelopardalids is Comet Linear, first discovered in 2004 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research Observatory, operated by the U.S. Air Force, whose main mission is to keep an electronic eye out for menacing near-Earth asteroids. The comet is named after the observatory. The comet last came by this part of the solar system in 2009 and will pass by the Earth again this early May. Linear's pass is a lot closer to the Earth this time because of the huge gravitational tug from Jupiter. It actually reshaped the comet's orbit, and Linear will pass within 280,000 miles of Earth, which isn't that much farther away from us than the moon. That basically means the Earth will be crossing into a lot more comet debris.
Comet experts don't want to get too carried away and declare the Camelopardalids meteor shower a meteor storm because much is unknown about this comet, including its dust productivity and even its precise orbit. The heaviest part could be short-lived, too, lasting perhaps between a few minutes to less than an hour. There might even be multiple peaks of the meteor shower in the predawn hours. The best advice I can give you is to be ready for anything from an astronomical spectacular, but also be psychologically prepared for a fizzle. The Camelopardalids are anything but a sure bet.
If Saturday morning's meteor shower does meet or beat expectations, we're at the right place at the right time. The United States and North America will be in the best position on the globe to watch the shower and there won't be much interfering moonlight either because we'll have a waning crescent moon that won't rise until 4 a.m. To increase your chances even more, get out into the dark countryside. You don't want to waste a potential great meteor shower mired in city lights.
They are called the Camelopardalids because the meteors will seem to emanate from the general direction of the very faint constellation Camelopardalis the Giraffe poised in the northern sky. Don't crane your neck trying to spot the stellar giraffe because it's very faint. However, the meteors will be available all over the celestial dome and not just in the northern sky. The tails of the meteors, though, will seem to point back to the northern sky. In fact, my advice is to lie back in a reclining lawn chair and roll your eyes all around the heavens. This is a great activity to do with the whole family so there's more sets of eyes on the sky.
So again, the Camelopardalids will peak early next Saturday morning, generally from midnight to morning twilight. Could it end up being a meteor storm? Maybe, maybe not. Personally, I'll be watching in the dark countryside praying for clear skies and hoping for the best.
(Lynch is an amateur astronomer and author of the book, "Stars, a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations." Contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.)