Infrared image of comet SW3 taken by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope in 2006. The comet has been broken since 1995, providing possible conditions for a meteor shower Monday evening. (NASA, JPL, Caltech)
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SALT LAKE CITY – Patience could pay off for star observers Monday night, as a new meteor shower could appear with the potential to illuminate the sky in a spectacular way.
Astronomers suspect that the material of a small comet, SW3, could cause a major meteor shower, called Tau Herculids, which will reach its maximum around 11 p.m. Monday, according to space.com.
Space.com columnist Joe Rao points out that rain can have the strongest annual meteor shower intensity. These rains are known to produce up to a hundred meteors per hour, as indicated in a summary of the 2022 meteor showers in the same space block.
As an added advantage, there is a small chance that the Tau Herculids could cause a meteorite explosion or a larger storm, where thousands of meteors per hour could be seen coming out of the night sky, Rao explains in his article.
However, all models and forecasts could come to nothing and the night sky could remain dark from Monday night to Tuesday morning. It all depends on the time of the Earth’s orbits and comet SW3.
Patrick Wiggins, a local astronomer and ambassador for the NASA / JPL Solar System in Utah, said that if the Tau Herculids reached their full potential, the resulting view would be among the most powerful meteorite storms in history. Rao compared the best of cases to Leonid meteor showers 20 years ago.
No one can say for sure what will happen, though. A recent post on the NASA blog is more conservative, not even indicating a storm as a possibility.
Wiggins says the potential for a storm is a “big yes.” However, this will not deter you from looking.
“The only thing that matters is that I will be watching,” he said.
Possibility of shower
Meteor showers occur when the Earth encounters a swarm of debris left by a comet.
In a newspaper article for the International Meteorological Organization on the Herculid Tau Rain of 2022, Rao wrote that at 11:00 pm on Monday, the Earth will intersect with the orbit of SW3 just ahead of own comet. This seemed to make the possibility of any weather activity in 2022 non-existent.
However, with more modeling, Rao determined that it is possible for the SW3 debris cloud to travel in front of the comet, just enough to produce rain. Two more studies support his findings, he writes.
In addition, Rao points to a similar comet rupture in the early 1800s, which led to the Andromedid meteorite storms of 1872 and 1885. Rao’s article suggests that the similarities between these two comets could support a storm forecast of Hercules tau.
Notes to see
If you plan to look, Rao suggests the following normal protocol for seeing a meteor shower: warm clothes and a hot drink to fight the cold, a reclining chair to support your neck, and a red flashlight to persevere with your night vision.
The names of meteor showers are usually formed after the point in the sky from which the meteors radiate, usually a constellation. When they were discovered in 1930, the Tau Herculids were expected to radiate from the constellation of Hercules, Rao’s paper said.
Today, the radiant will be closer to the constellation of Bootes. To find this constellation, locate the handle of the Big Dipper and direct your vision to the first brightest star you see: Arcturus, the brightest star in Bootes.
You don’t have to look directly at the radiant to see meteors in the rain. Scientific writer and former director of the Hansen Planetarium Mark Littman wrote a book on 19th century Great Leonid meteor storms in anticipation of the 1998 and 1999 rains, entitled “The Flaming Skies.” In this book, he explains that looking away from the radiant shower will allow you to see longer queues.
If there is a storm, however, and it rains thousands of meteors, looking directly at the radiant will give the illusion of flying through space, like a Federation ship in the TV series “Star Trek”, he illustrated Littman.
Rao warns that as expected meteors arrive on Earth on Monday night, they will also appear fainter, making a dark sky a must. He added that a possible storm would be “short-lived; no more than several hours”.
And, of course, the weather is the ultimate factor in any astronomical event.
“Look at the sky,” Wiggins said, picking up the old sci-fi adage. “Everywhere. Keep looking. Keep looking at the sky.”
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Ryan Boyce is a lover of science and history. His first writing project was to compile the history of space exploration on the computer of his 3rd grade teacher, and he has not stopped writing since.