Draconid Meteor Shower 2018 Peaks Monday! Here's What to Expect.
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Draconid Meteor Shower 2018 Peaks Monday! Here's What to Expect.
Draconid Meteor Shower 2018 Peaks Monday! Here's What to Expect.
Draconid Meteor Shower 2018 Peaks Monday! Here's What to Expect.
If you are a fan of the meteor shower, mark Monday night (October 8) on your calendar, especially if you live in the Mid-Atlantic or Northeast of the United States, as well as in the maritime provinces of eastern Canada. On that night, the Earth will pass through the irregular and surprised flow of the Draconid meteors.
the annual Draconid meteor shower It happens every year around October 8 when the Earth passes through a stream of dust from the periodic comet 21P / Giacobini-Zinner, which from here on we will refer to as Comet G-Z. so called because the meteors seem to emanate from the constellation of Draco, the Dragon.
If you live anywhere else in the rest of North America, the expected peak of this meteor shower will occur during the afternoon, so at nightfall you will look for any lingering lingering screen, if any at all.
The best meteor exhibition known in October is the Orionid meter shower, which peaks around October 21 and is one of the most reliable annual screens. This year, however, the Draconid rain is the wild card. In general, little or nothing in terms of draconid meteors are seen in most years, but the draconids have a personality of Jekyll and Hyde.
The remarkable activity of the meteors seems to occur when the Earth passes just inside the orbit of the comet G-Z shortly after the comet itself has passed. In 1933 and 1946, sky watchers were dazzled by amazing meteor "storms" that produced thousands of meteors per hour. In those years, the Earth passed through particularly dense filaments of dusty debris that the comet had thrown in earlier passes around the sun. The Draconids have not had that kind of performance since then, although the rates reached hundreds per hour in 1985, 1998 and more recently in 2011.
When and where to look
The annual Rain of Meteors of Draconids will reach its peak during the night of Monday, October 8. This rain, generated by debris thrown by Comet 21P / Giacobini-Zinner, generally provides relatively few meteors. But sometimes it has been much more prolific. The best time to watch Draconids will be after dark, when the radiant in Draco is high in the northern sky.
As I mentioned earlier, the evening of Monday, October 8 is the time to be watching this year. New England and the Canadian maritime provinces seem positioned to have the best opportunity.
Unlike most meteor showers, the Draconids are at their best at night and not after midnight. Its radiant (apparent point of origin dies to perspective) in the constellation of draco It is high in the northwest sky when darkness falls; It moves down during the night and is close to the horizon at sunrise.
Start looking at the sky above your head as soon as it gets dark. No special equipment is needed: just an open view of the sky, a lawn chair or a blanket reclined on the floor, a clock and a notebook or tape recorder to count the Draconids seen.
The shower radiant is near Draco's dragon-shaped head, the Dragon. A member of the rain is a meteor whose path, if it goes back far enough, seems to come from this place. The meteors themselves can appear anywhere in the sky.
Eastern New England and the maritime provinces of Canada are the places to see if the Draconids provide any significant weather activity right after the local sunset on Monday night. Based on a consensus of reputable meteor experts, the rain peak is forecast for approximately 23:50 universal time (7:50 p.m. Eastern Time). This map shows the areas that will be at night, the astronomical twilight ("Late Twilight") and the brightest twilight at that time. However, the weather prediction may be off by up to 20 minutes, and some of the meteors may be bright enough to show through a lot of twilight. Observers somewhat to the west of the main zone could have the opportunity to detect meteors.
Credit: Joe Rao, Space.com
The Draconid meteors seem to come towards us from the north, almost perpendicular to the plane of the solar system; The north pole of the ecliptic (in effect, the north pole of the solar system) is in Draco. Meteors seem to move slowly, their entry speed of 12 miles per second (20 km / s), being among the slowest of any meteor shower.
Meteorite expert Alastair McBeath points out: "Poets among us would like to think of these as 'The tears of the dragon' or as their fiery breath."
Stormy times in 2018?
This graph shows where the meteoroids have been thickest around 21P / Giacobini-Zinner Comet, as revealed by the Earth when bathing when it sank through the orbital plane of the comet. The horizontal scale indicates the number of days when the meteoroids are delayed with respect to the parent comet (+) or advance (-). The vertical axis is the distance in astronomical units that the particles are outside the orbit of the comet (-) or inside it (+). An astronomical unit equals 92.9 million miles (149.5 million km). Our passage through the orbital plane in 2018 is halfway between the meteor storm of 1946 and the outbreak of 1985.
Credit: Sky & Telescope Magazine
In October of 1998, I wrote an article for Sky & Telescope magazine about the Draconid meteor shower and the use of data kindly provided by Donald K. Yeomans, of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at that time, he created a diagram showing where the meteoroids had apparently been thickest around the comet G-Z.
The distance between the two orbits at the nodal crossing point is plotted vertically, and the moment the Earth crosses this point in front of or behind the comet is traced horizontally. Eighteen past encounters are traced. The main rains of 1933, 1946, 1985 and 1998 are shown as outbursts of stars, minor rains as points and years of low or zero activity reported as open circles.
Looking 20 years into the future, I placed a question mark on where the Earth would be in 2018 in relation to the comet node, since the orbital geometry between the two seemed approximately halfway between the 1946 meteor storm (3,000 -6,000 per hour) and the strong meteor explosion of 1985 (600-800 per hour) At that time I had the feeling that 2018 would bring another memorable Draconid shower.
But that optimistic perspective would soon change.
"Making a hole" in a possible meteor storm
Each Dredonite meteoroid follows its own slightly different orbit. Jérémie Vaubaillion modeled the orbits of swarms thrown by 21P / Comet Giacobini-Zinner during each of its steps by the sun in 1946, 1953 and 1959. The progress of the Earth is marked at 0:00 UT from October 7 to 13 October (European style of the Day / The month is used ... so "8/10 = October 8) The Earth is predicted to go through a" hole "in the densely packed debris channel of the dusty comet just before from 0:00 UT on October 9, presumably avoiding a potential meteor storm The GAIA spacecraft, however, is apparently directly in the path of the meteoroid cloud to the right of the Earth's path.
Credit: Jérémie Vaubaillion IMCCE
A dense and concentrated flow of meteoroids like the Draconids has a complex structure, which for years was always extremely difficult to map because we could not see it. Twenty years ago, the best we could do was try to forecast the activity of the meteors by determining when the Earth would pass through the orbital plane of the G-Z comet and hope for the best.
But today, astronomers who use computer simulations routinely calculate the locations in the space of individual dust trails and have been able to successfully predict the intensity and arrival of the peak of a variety of meteor showers at one hour. , sometimes even in minutes.
Unfortunately, when the meteor experts used their next-generation computer simulations to look at the Draconids 2018, there was bad news.
What they found was a large "gap" that had apparently opened up within a channel of a group of very clustered meteor trails from 1946 to 1959. The Earth is expected to move through that gap on Monday night and , for the most part, get lost outside (for several hundred thousand miles) in a thick cloud of dusty material that might otherwise produce a stupendous meteor storm.
Interestingly, the European Space Agency Gaia spaceship the launch in December 2013 to make accurate measurements of the positions and distances of the stars is located approximately 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth, and is right on the predicted path of the dense cloud of debris of the comet.
Canadian astronomer Peter Brown told Space.com: "ESA will redirect its spacecraft to minimize the possibility of Draconid impacts, although we expect them to see something: they are one of the most sensitive platforms that have been placed in orbit to detect small impacts of meteoroids because of the nature of their mission. "
Experts touch
Even though the Earth is probably missing a full-blown meteor storm, several forecasts from renowned meteor experts around the world suggest that there might still be a modest, if short-lived, peak of activity for Draconids. 2 hours) that appears shortly after dark for parts of eastern North America on Monday night.
Brown, who along with his wife Margaret Campbell-Brown edits the meteorite section of the annual publication "Observer's manual"of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC, 2017), predicts a peak at 7:51 p.m. EDT (2351 GMT) with a meteor activity that does not exceed a few dozen meteors per hour.
Astronomer Mikiya Sato of Japan has found an approach of the Earth to the dust trail of the comet in 1953. This path was slightly disturbed when it approached the Earth in 1985. Consequently, the dust should spread a little, but could still produce recognizable speeds in the range of 20 to 50 meteors centered at 8:14 pm EDT (0014 Oct. 9 GMT).
Astronomer Jeremie Vaubaillon of France pointed to a possible maximum at 7:31 p.m. EDT (2331 GMT) with an hourly rate of about 15 meteors.
A forecast model made by the Russian Mikhail Maslov found several traces of dust, but none of them close enough to cause high rates in 2018. The closest was the 1953 trail that has been masked due to previous encounters with the Earth. Even so, it suggests that 10 to 15 meteors may occur at 7:34 p.m. EDT (2334 GMT).
Will the dragon call in 2018?
I think it should be emphasized that with the Draconids there is always a possibility of surprise. There are uncertainties in the precise locations of the traces of dust thrown by Comet G-Z that are large enough to sometimes confuse attempts to model the shower accurately. Because the orbit of the Draconid meteoroid current extends to Jupiter, the gravity of that planet may have pushed the current around, preventing precise predictions for future rains.
In October 2012, for example, observers in Eastern Europe were surprised by a brief explosion of dozens of bright meteors, while the Canadian radar detected thousands of radar echoes caused by the interaction of the Earth with a trail of dust thrown by Comet GZ in 1966. The experts did not think anything remarkable would happen, but they were wrong.
Then, on Monday, without sacrificing the dream, you will have the opportunity to see if there is another surprise in sight. So what do you have to lose? It can rise above your expectations ... or you may be disappointed.
It is true that it does not look very good, however, anything can happen. That is the nature of the October Draconids; you never know very well
Editor's note: If you capture an amazing photo of the Draconid meteor shower video of 2018 and want to share it with Space.com for a story or slideshow, send comments and images to spacephotos@spcae.com!
Joe Rao is an instructor and guest professor at the Hayden Planetarium in New York. He writes about astronomy for the Natural History magazine, the Farmers' Almanac and other publications, and is also an on-camera meteorologist for Verizon FiOS1 News in the Lower Hudson Valley of New York. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published in Space.com.
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