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Witness the Birth of a Meteor Shower
StartsWithABang writes: "Here on Earth, we think of shooting stars and meteor showers as things that happen periodically; sometimes they're spectacular, sometimes they're rare. But in all cases, they're caused by comet debris, and they should flare up each time the Earth crosses the comet's path. But as it turns out, every meteor shower had a point in its past where it happened for the very first time. In all of human history, we've never recorded one that occurred for the very first time where none happened before. Well, for those of you who want to take the chance to be a part of it, this coming Friday night/Saturday morning, look for the Camelopardalids, making their Earthly debut this year!"
...so it'll be "...this coming Friday night/Saturday morning, look up and see... clouds!"
Another view from some space guy, Dr Phillips: http://science.nasa.gov/scienc...
Early name for a giraffe. Probably given by someone who was a bit hazy about what a camel looked like...
Actually, I suspect it was named by someone who possibly knew quite well what a camel and a leopard looked like, but only had a crude description or sketch from someone who had been one of the first Europeans to travel far enough into Africa to see a giraffe first hand. The name is ancient, not part of modern taxonomy, and other than the length of the neck and lack of a hump, it's actually not too far off visually, especially if you've seen both up close; a camel (long legs, quite tall, with a fairly long neck) combined a leopard's skin patterning.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Long legs like a camel, spots like a leopard. Not that hazy really. Actually more descriptive than Giraffe itself ("zarafa"), "fast walker".
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
medium.com really seems to be promoting itself this past couple of weeks. Reddit, here and elsewhere.
"But in all cases, they're caused by comet debris"
There was a shooting star 65 million years ago that wasn't caused by comet debris, and others since then that were not quite as spectacular.
In all of human history, we've never recorded one that occurred for the very first time where none happened before.
How do we know it never happened before? It may be sporadic and simply escaped recording (which was quite hit or miss before modern times).
There are many showers that were reported for the first time in recent history with no record of prior observation (e.g. the Quadrantids, never noted before 1825). In fact we are currently in a period of frequent shower discovery (several new ones a year) since sky-imaging networks are now picking up many showers that are sparse, and thus eluded visual detection.
The summary should have said "we've never predicted a shower where none has been observed before", it remains to be seen whether this one materializes.
The lifetime of a shower is typically several thousand years, so they are periodically being created.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Guaranteed Friday night / Saturday morning cloud cover.
Anyone who has ever looked at the night sky might goto H-A and create an account.The site has much info. I saw the Shuttle chasing the ISS in orbit over my home, many satts like TRMM and China's Tiangong !, spy satts like the Lacrosse series passing by. Most of what can be seen is space junk, rocket bodies and such, some have been in orbit for twenty years. The X37B, seen that too. I was at work and saw Shuttle Columbia on it's fateful re-entry.... RIP brave souls. http://www.heavens-above.com/m... http://www.space.com/25275-x37...
A friend of mine who works for NASA (or at least in the downstream distribution of NASA satellite data) and is an amateur astronomer and photographer sent me this information: (Thanks Indy!) - Maybe it'll be useful to some....
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:-) ). But don't *focus* on staring to the north! Look around. Face east a bit. West. Look overhead! Meteors can fall all around. It's just that you will likely see more (albeit shorter, quicker) meteors coming out of the north than you will to the west, east, or overhead (which will be longer, and slower, but relatively fewer). But don't restrict yourself to only northward-looking.
:-( The further away from lights you can get, the better. And get to a location where you have open skies, a view to the north, and can see as much of the sky as possible (being in the middle of the woods - dark or not - won't do you a bit of good in viewing the sky much)
:-) Meteor watching - heck, night sky watching in general - is not among the more heat-inducing activities. ;-) Also, lawn chairs or blankets, and sleeping bags, are nice to have. Be comfortable!
So, this coming weekend, specifically Friday night/Saturday morning, there is to be a brand spanky new meteor shower happening. So brand spanky new it hasn't been observed before, because the dust from the associated comet has not intersected with Earth's path until now. And because of all the uncertainty with the debris stream, there are heavy caveats to "this MAY happen" - but if it does...brand new event never before seen!
Given that it's so new, that nothing is *known* about it, anything could happen. It could fizzle. Or it could become the most spectacular thing to happen since the Leonid meteor storm of 2002 (it is unlikely, however great this meteor shower gets, that it'll get THAT good!).
So, first, the nuts and bolts for this weekend. The meteor shower is *predicted* to reach it's peak between the hours of 2am and 4am Eastern Daylight Time on the morning of May 24th (adjust your times accordingly with respect to your time zones; example, midnight to 2am Mountain Time). BUT, because there are uncertainties in exactly where the dust ball is that we will be passing by, it could peak upwards of a few hours on either side of that. However, the meteor folk who have been tracking this stuff are reasonably confident on their predict times.
Further to this, it's not known how distributed the debris cloud is. It could be pretty compact, in which case the peak may last only a few minutes. Or it could be fairly distributed, in which case the peak could last for hours. Or it could be clumpy, in which case there may be more than one peak! Again, new brand spanky new meteor shower, we have no idea yet!
Second, the meteor shower will appear to be coming out of the *very* obscure constellation of Camelopardalis, which is situated to the right of the Big Dipper, left of Cassiopeia, and below the Little Dipper (see attached image). It's a pretty sparse area of sky. The constellation is so obscure that in the decades of my looking at the sky, I've never tried tracing it out. Maybe this weekend I finally will.
So, given the above radiant, your best option to face during the shower is to the north (and if you're not sure where that is - and not everyone does, especially if they are directionally challenged - remember where the sun went down, then stand so that direction is off to your left
Darkness. If at all possible, you want to find the darkest location you can to see this. That means, getting out of and AWAY from the cities. Light pollution will utterly swamp the sky, and you won't see ANYthing.
Dressing for the Weather. Assuming it'll be clear where you are, check the forecasted temperature lows, and dress as if it will be 10-15 degrees cooler/colder than that. Hats are good.
What you MIGHT expect to see? Really, nobody *knows* for certain, but I've seen some healthy numbers tossed out t
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."