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Rare Meteor Event to Inform on Dangerous Comets
David Shiga writes "September 1, 2007 may be a once in a lifetime opportunity to see a rare meteor shower called the alpha Aurigids, New Scientist reports. Unlike better-known displays like the Perseids that occur every year on the same date, the alpha Aurigids have only been spotted three times before, in 1935, 1986, and 1994. NASA's Peter Jenniskens predicts they will return again this year, only to disappear again for the next 50 years. Meteor showers are caused by debris shed from comets, and the rarity of the alpha Aurigids is due to the exceptionally infrequent passes of its parent comet through the inner solar system, just once every 2000 years. Studying the alpha Aurigids could help astronomers turn these rare showers into an advance warning system for long period comets with potentially dangerous orbits, which would be hard to spot ahead of a collision with Earth."
Then, when you are 71, viola!
Makes sense to me. As you get older you often acquire a taste for classical music.
Speaking of the Perseids.. might have mentioned that -those- are this week. Specifically, the 12th should be the high point, but from thursday through monday you may catch them. As luck (or stellar physics, I suppose) would have it - it'll be New Moon, so no moonlight interference.
From TA: "Based on past showers, there should be up to 200 bright meteors visible per hour, and they may have an unusual blue-green colour."
[that's the info I wanted from the article... perfect timing since we'll be canoing with friends at that date... now, if only the god of blow-away-clouds can be with us...]
Animoog.org
Ok, but... how many rare showers are there? Do we have a dozen showers that we don't know which comet caused that may be sneaking up on us (again?)
Be honest here... how much of the sky is being watched at any one time?
I'd rather see a better effort to tracking undiscovered comets and asteroids. Or else a zillion years from now, alien archaeologists on Mars will find an AOL CD blown as ejecta from the crater that wiped out a technologically advanced race on the 3rd planet.