Quadrantid meteor shower won't have to compete with moonlight

Quadrantid meteor shower peak could hit as many as 100 meteors per hour, says NASA. The Quadrantid meteor shower will peak at 2 a.m. on Jan. 4.

|
NASA/MEO/B. Cooke
False-color image of a rare early Quadrantid, captured by a NASA meteor camera in 2010.

The first meteor shower of 2012 — the lesser known Quadrantid meteor shower — will kick off a new year of skywatching when it peaks on Wednesday (Jan. 4).

While many meteor displays in 2011 were washed out by a bright moon, the Quadrantid meteor shower is expected to put on a spectacular light show, with no pesky moonlight to interfere. The peak of the Quadrantids will occur at around 2 a.m. EST (0700 GMT) on Jan. 4.

If you're planning to stay up late to catch the peak, you could be treated to meteors at a rate of 100 per hour, NASA officials said in a statement. Luckily, the waxing gibbous moon will set at around 3 a.m. local time, so as long as there are clear skies, conditions should be ripe for meteor watching into the pre-dawn hours. The sky map available here  shower where to look to see the Quadrantid meteors.

RECOMMENDED: Top 12 skywatching events of 2012

Unlike the more well-known Perseid and Geminid meteor showers, the Quadrantids last only a few hours, so skywatchers have a narrower window of opportunity to spot them.

Meteor showers occur when Earth travels through leftover debris from comets or asteroids. They are often known as "shooting stars," because of the way they streak across the sky.

The Quadrantid meteors originate from an asteroid called 2003 EH1, and were first seen in 1825. According to some studies, this cosmic body could be a piece of a comet that broke apart several centuries ago, and the Quadrantids are the crumbled relics of debris from this fragmentation, NASA officials said. [12 Must-See Skywatching Events in 2012]

As Earth passes through, dust and debris will enter the planet's atmosphere a blistering speed of about 90,000 miles per hour (almost 145,000 kilometers per hour). These fragments will burn up about 50 miles (80 km) above Earth's surface, NASA officials said.

Most meteor showers get their name based on the constellations from which they appear to streak. When we look at the so-called radiants, we are looking down the paths of the meteors that strike Earth's atmosphere.

Because of the location of the radiant, at the northern tip of the constellation Bootes, only northern hemisphere skywatchers will be able to see Quadrantids.

The Quadrantids were named after the constellation of Quadrans Muralis, the wall quadrant, which is located between the constellations of Bootes and Draco. Quadrans Muralis was named by the French astronomer Jerome Lalande in 1795.

The constellation represents an early astronomical instrument that was used to observe and plot stars. Interestingly, the constellation is no longer recognized by the astronomical community, but the name lives on with the January meteor shower.

Editor's note: If you snap an amazing photo of the Quadrantid meteor shower would like to share it with SPACE.com, contact managing editor Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com.

QUIZ: Are you scientifically literate? Take the quiz.

You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Quadrantid meteor shower won't have to compete with moonlight
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0102/Quadrantid-meteor-shower-won-t-have-to-compete-with-moonlight
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe