There is a chance that a slight meteor shower known as the Tau Herculidas could occur during this long Memorial Day weekend.
Or that this astronomical event is the brightest meteor shower of the year and one of the strongest in decades, if it happens.
It will be a great show or just a few flashes of shooting stars in the sky, as NASA has predicted, in the night sky, at night from 30 to 31 of May. Called Tau-Herculidas, this shower results from the debris cloud formed by the fragmentation of comet 73P/Schwassmann- Wachmann (SW3).
After its discovery in 1930, the comet disappeared until it reappeared in the decade of 1970. When it was rediscovered, it was difficult to detect without a telescope. But at 1995, a later follow-up observed that the comet had become a 600 times brighter and relatively easier to spot with the naked eye.
Comet SW3 breaks up into several pieces. In 1970, when it approached Earth, it was made up of about 70 fragments. NASA says that if meteorites reach Earth this year, they could enter Earth’s atmosphere at a relatively slower speed, around 8 m/h or travel faster than 220 m/h, and this would make a big difference.
The Tau Herculid shower depends on the speed of the comet debris
The next meteor shower should be quite bright as it will be high in the sky. Also, the absence of the Moon would make the event much easier to detect, especially in the northern hemisphere.
“This event will be all or nothing. If the debris from SW3 is traveling faster than 220 m/h when it breaks away from the comet, then we could see a good shower of meteorites. If the debris has slower ejection velocities, nothing will reach Earth and there will be no meteors from this comet,” Bill Cooke, who directs NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, said in a statement. According to the space agency, if the remains of the comet reach great speed, this shower of shooting stars would be the most powerful in several decades.
“Meteors are not rare”, said Bill Cooke. “Earth is bombarded every day by millions of interplanetary debris fragments that pass through our solar system.” When they are visible in the night sky, we see them as shooting stars.
Most particles do not they are bigger than dust and sand. Hitting the upper atmosphere at speeds of up to 45 miles per second, they ignite and burn. On any given night, the average person can see 4 to 8 meteors per hour.
Meteor showers, however, are caused by streams of comets and asteroid debris, which create many more flares and beams of light as the Earth passes through the debris field. And they can cause impressive meteor showers.
Whether it’s a faint meteor shower or a huge extravaganza of hundreds, if you can, take a look if you’re in North America under clear, dark skies around 1am May 45 ET: You may be able to see it, according to NASA.
You may be interested in:
– Strange signals from the Voyager space probe 1 have NASA baffled
– The “door” on Mars: the explanation about the mysterious formation in a photo of the red planet
– VIDEO: The NASA reveals a translation of the sound of a black hole for the first time in history