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Originally posted on Dark Sky Diary by Steve Owens @Darkskyman

Some time in the small hours of Friday or Saturday morning (21-22 October 2011) the Orionids meteor shower will reach its peak activity rate.  The peak occurs some time around 21 October each year, but this year it’s uncertain which day it will fall on.

The Orionid's parent Comet P/Halley as taken March 8, 1986 by W. Liller, Easter Island, part of the International Halley Watch (IHW) Large Scale Phenomena Network.

Meteor showers result from the Earth passing through the trail of dust and debris left behind by a comet. In the case of the Orionids the parent object is the most famous of all the comets – Halley’s Comet.

The peak meteor rate for the Orionids is lower than some of the more spectacular showers (the Perseids in August, the Geminids in December, and the Quadrantids in January all regularly outperform the Orionids) but it is still worth looking out for.

The meteors will appear to radiate from the constellation of Orion (hence the name) but they will streak across the sky in all directions, and so you shouldn’t confine yourself to only looking towards this one constellation.

On Thursday and Friday evenings the radiant rises in the east around 2200 BST (2100 UT)  and continues to rise to its highest in the south just before the sky starts to brighten at 0600 BST (0500 UT). The higher the radiant above the horizon the more meteors you will see. However a crescent Moon will rises in the east on both mornings, the light from which will drown out some of the fainter meteors.

This shouldn’t matter much to you if you’re observing from an urban or suburban area, as the man-made light pollution in the sky will do a far better job of obscuring the meteor shower than the Moon will, but for lucky observers in dark sites (and I’ll be one of them, as I’m spending the weekend on Sark, the world’s first Dark Sky Island) the Moon may interfere.

Here’s a table with estimated hourly rates based on dark skies / suburban / urban areas, at hourly intervals throughout the night, assuming a ZHR =40 throughout this period (It may be that the peak will fall outwith this period, e.g. in daylight hours, so these are best-case-scenario numbers).

* the true rates, given that the Moon is causing natural light pollution, are probably half these values.

All of these timings and altitudes are based on an observer in central Scotland. For other UK observers the values in columns 2-4 may be slightly off, but not noticeably so.

Observing Advice: wrap up warm, head out before midnight, sit youself in a reclining lawn chair, and enjoy the spectacle. The rates may pick up around 0200 BST on Thursday or Friday and may stay high until dawn.

Originally posted on and full credit to spaceweather.com

According to worldwide observers reporting to the International Meteor Organization, there was indeed an outburst of Draconid meteors on October 8th. Preliminary counts suggest a peak rate of 660 meteors per hour at 2010 UT (4:10 pm EDT).

Most Draconids in the outburst were faint, but not all. Göran Fredriksson photographed this fireball splitting the evening twilight over Örnsköldsvik, Sweden:

The meteor rate and overall faintness of the display was in good accord with predictions by leading forecasters such as Jeremie Vaubaillon of the Institute for Celestial Mechanics in France and analysts at NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office.

more images: from Jesper Grønne of Silkeborg Denmark; from Runar Sandnes of Reed, Norway; from Frank Martin Ingilæ of Tana, Finnmark, Norway; from Ronny Tertnes of Bergem, Norway; from Richard Klofac of Czech Republic, Zlechov; from Thomas Hagen of Oslo, Norway; from Adrian West of West Berkshire United Kingdom; from Pete Glastonbury of Devizes, Wiltshire, UK; from Jaromír N?mec of Davle, Czech Republic

Meteor Burst - Credit: NASA

If you live in the Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East area, then keep watching the clock for 17-18:00 UTC when you may be in the right place at the right time for a burst of activity from the annual Draconid Meteor Shower. There’s a possibility you might see up to 1,000 meteors an hour! [click to continue…]

Originally posted by and full credit to Spaceweather.com

On October 8th, Earth will pass through a network of dusty filaments shed by Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner. Forecasters expect the encounter to produce anywhere from a few dozen to a thousand meteors per hour visible mainly over Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East. The meteors will stream from the northern constellation Draco–hence their name, the “Draconids.”

Peak rates should occur between 1600 UT and 2200 UT (noon – 6 pm EDT) as Earth grazes a series of filaments nearly intersecting our planet’s orbit. Analysts at the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office prepared this plot showing how the meteor rate is likely to vary:

If the maximum around 1900 UT reaches 1000 meteors per hour, the 2011 Draconids will be classified as a full-fledged meteor storm. The question is, will anyone see it? Bright moonlight over Europe, Africa and the Middle East will reduce the number of visible meteors 2- to 10-fold. The situation is even worse in North America where the shower occurs in broad daylight.

One way to enjoy the Draconids, no matter where you live, is to listen to them. The Air Force Space Surveillance Radar will be scanning the skies over the USA during the shower. When a Draconid passes through the radar beam–ping!–there will be an echo. Tune in to Space Weather Radio for live audio.

A similar system, still employing the radio reflection method displays meteors coming in on your computer in the form of a live graph – Meteor Live View

In Europe, an international team of scientists plans to observe the shower from airplanes flying at ~30,000 feet where the thin air reduces the impact of lunar glare. In Bishop, California, a team of high school students will launch an experimental helium balloon to higher altitudes, 100,000 feet or more, where the sky is black even at noon. Cameras in the balloon’s payload might catch some Draconid fireballs during the peak hours of the outburst.

Stay tuned for updates as Earth approaches the debris zone.

Originally posted on Universe Today by Adrian West

Credit: NASA

The Draconids are coming! Will this meteor shower produce a storm of observable meteors, or just a minor squall? The Draconid Meteor Show should begin on October 8, 2011 starting at dusk (roughly 19:00 BST) and continue through the evening. Peak activity of this normally minor and quiet shower is estimated to be at 21:00 BST (20:00 UT). There seems to be a wide range of predictions for this year’s shower, but some astronomers believe there could be up to 1,000 meteors per hour, making this a meteor storm!
Read the rest of this entry »

Originally posted on Dark Sky Diary by Steve Owens @Darkskyman on twitter

On Saturday 8 October 2011 a rare event may occur – a meteor storm! The usually sedate Draconids meteor shower only produces a few shooting stars per hour in most years, but in some years we have a meteor storm, and that’s just what’s predicted for this year.

It Won't Look Like This

During a meteor storm the Earth passes through a particularly dense clump of comet dust, meaning that rates of shooting stars temporarily spike, and estimates this time suggest the possibility of up to 10 shooting stars per minute during the peak of the storm. However a nearly full Moon may spoil the view, possibly drowning out all but the brightest meteors, reducing the actual observed rate perhaps 1 per minute – still well worth looking out for.

The peak is set to occur at 2000UT (2100 BST), and is ideally placed for observers in the UK. Activity is expected to increase from 1600UT (1700 BST) but at that stage the sky will still be bright in the UK.

If you’re keen to witness this (possibly) amazing event here are some top tips:

1. Head out early.  Start your meteorwatch once the sky gets dark enough. For most people in the UK this will be from 1900 – 1930 BST (anyone living in the north of Scotland will have to wait a bit longer). Although the peak of the storm is estimated to occur around 2100 BST there will be plenty to see in the hours leading up to the peak.
2. Know where to look. The Draconids all appear to originate from the constellation Draco, which will be high in the NW sky, just above and to the left of the north star, Polaris. However the meteors will streak across the entire sky so don’t just look NW.
3. Know what to look for. Meteors appear as bright streaks of light moving rapidly across the sky. They last for a fraction of a second, but the Draconids are unusually slow meteors. Still, blink and you might miss one.
4. Keep the Moon to your back. The full Moon will drown out the light from all but the brightest Draconids, and if you look at the Moon it will spoil your night vision, so keep it behind you, ideally blocked out by a building or tree.
5. You just need your eyes. Binoculars and telescopes, while ideal for observing faint nebulae and planets, are no good for meteorwatching. You want to take in as much of the sky as you can, and have as wide a field of view as possible, so just use your eyes.
6. Get comfortable. The best bit of meteorwatching kit is a reclining lawn chair. Point it towards the NW, lie back, look up and enjoy the show.
7. Keep warm. It will be very cold outside if it is clear, so wrap up warm. If you’re lying back on a reclining chair, wrap yourself in a blanket or sleeping back form maximum warmth.
8. Get away from city lights. This isn’t as important for this shower, as the Moon is flooding the sky with natural light anyway, but in general the fewer lights you have around you the better.
9. Get away from clouds. This hopefully goes without saying, but if your sky is cloudy you won’t see much. The UK Met Office website can tell you if there is a clear sky anywhere near you, and you should consider traveling to get clear skies. You can also check out meteor activity using the Meteor Live View.
10. Record your observations. If you want to take part in a meteorwatch and submit your observations there a several ways you can do that. One fun and accessible approach is to tweet your observations with the #meteorwatch hashtag your post code and country code to see your results on the meteor map. If you want to take more detailed rigourous data you can submit an observing form to the International Meteor Organisation, the British Astronomical Association or the Society for Popular Astronomy

Make sure you tell your friends! This a great opportunity to see a very rare meteor storm, so get as many people as possible outside and looking up.

CAVEAT: This is only a predicted meteor storm; it may not occur and if it doesn’t meteor levels will be very low.

2011 Perseid+Jupiter Credit: David Dickinsen

Sure, you’ve heard of the August Perseids that come blazing across the sky and are invariably trumpeted by the news as the “Meteor Shower of the Millennium!” on a yearly basis. Perhaps you’ve even heard of the Leonids, normally a feeble November shower prone to legendary outbursts roughly every 33 years. But have you ever heard of the October Draconids?

I’ll admit I hadn’t until the October 1998 issue of Sky & Telescope arrived on my doorstep. Or should I say tent-flap? You see, the last half of 1998 found me deployed with my U.S. Air Force squadron to Al Jaber, Kuwait. In those days, email (and spam) were still a hip “new thing,” giant washing-machine-like CRT monitors adorned many office desks, and we were involved with a cat-and-mouse game between Saddam and the U.N. Inspectors that eventually became the shooting war of Operation Desert Fox. A military base in the desert was also a fine place to do some causal astronomy. The Leonids put on a fine show that year approaching storm levels of 1,000 per hour from our longitude. I remember mentioning the Leonid meteors to one of our F-16 pilots, and they later briefed not to mistake the fireball flashes for Iraqi AAA (an important distinction!) Read the rest of this entry »

Credit: NASA @Astro_Ron

What a “Shooting Star” looks like from space Taken yesterday during Perseid Meteor Shower by @Astro_ron on board the International Space Station

Meteor Detection

When a meteor strikes Earth’s atmosphere it decelerates rapidly. The friction created by the air causes the meteor to burn up at extremely high temperatures creating the white “shooting star” that we are all familiar with. This process also ionises the air along the trail making it possible to reflect radio waves.

Utilising a high powered VHF radar signal sent into the sky, we are able to detect reflected waves from these ionisation trails. Because the meteor is moving, the reflected signal is shifted in frequency from the original, by an amount according to it’s speed. This shift is also heard as an audible ping by the station operator.

Our system translates the reflected wave into three main parameters - Amplitude (strength), Frequency shift (Doppler shift) and decay time. This allows us to determine the relative size of the meteor strike (vertical scale) and the relative approximate speed and deceleration (amount of shift and width of the trace).

You can see the output from our system above in real time (approximately 1 minute delay on the Internet). During a meteor shower this trace will be full of strike traces, but it is also surprising how many meteors are striking Earth’s atmosphere all of the time.

Typical Meteor Strike

Here you can see what a typical meteor strike looks like. The trace starts high in frequency and rapidly drops to the radar carrier frequency as the meteor decelerates in the atmosphere, increasing in strength    (ionisation) as it burns up. This creates this typical triangular shape you can see here. The width, height and shape tell us a lot about the meteor strike. The blue is the baseline atmospheric noise.

N.L.O. Meteor Detection Live View is kindly donated by Meteorscan.com All data is collected and sent live to meteorwatch.org via the state of the art meteor detection system at the Norman Lockyer Observatory in Sidmouth, Devon.

Meteors streaking across the sky are an amazing sight.  Every time I see a meteor is a thrilling moment.

I’m not a professional astronomer or even a specialized expert.  I’ve just been watching the skies for meteors and showing others how to spot them for a long time.  I particularly enjoy helping people who have never seen a meteor before experience their first sighting.  My greatest success is watching the Perseid Meteor shower together with my kids while we were camping in the mountains together.  It is an emotional memory that we’ll share all our lives.

Watching meteors is special because it truly takes no special equipment whatsoever.  Telescopes or cameras just restrict your field of view – for best viewing simply lie back and enjoy the sky in front of your own eyes.

Meteorwatch itself is special for a lot of reasons.  It is a world-wide event of professional and amateur astronomers getting together to share the heaven’s most showy display of the year.  It’s an opportunity to collect real data that may be useful for astronomers to work with to increase our understanding of space.  For me, meteorwatch is a chance to share my excitement with others who have never seen the beauty of a meteor flashing overhead.

Our goal for meteorwatch is to increase the odds for everyone to find meteors.  Meteorwatch occurs August 12 through August 14 to correspond with the Perseid Meteor shower.  The Perseids are a predictable shower that comes every year.  In fact, meteors from the Perseids have been observed for about 2000 years already!  The meteors are frequent and fairly bright, so it’s likely that you’ll be able to spot one if you go out prepared.

The first step of being prepared is that you need to find the darkest place you can find, as far away as possible from lights that will disrupt your night vision.  If the moon is out while you’re observing, try to block it as best as you can with trees or a hill so you don’t look at it and ruin your night vision.  If your night vision does get disrupted, you will not be able to see the dimmer meteors at all, so keep your eyes up and don’t pull out your phone to tweet every few minutes.

Credit: Science@Nasa.gov

It’s true that Perseid meteors will likely come at between one and two meteors every minute, but you won’t be able to see that many because most of them are dim and washed out by city lights.  The darker it is, the more meteors you will see!  When I’m in a reasonably dark area near the outskirts of my city I’m happy to see one meteor every five minutes or so.  If you can’t get out of the city, you may have to wait longer because you will only see the brightest meteors.  There are plenty of sightings from the heart of cities, so it’s not impossible, just more difficult.  It’s certainly worth an attempt if you can find a park without lights or some other dark area near you.

The second step is to make sure that you’re comfortable while waiting.  A good chair that supports your neck while you look up is helpful.  Even though the Perseids occur during summer, the nights can get quite chilly so dress warmly and bring something warm to drink.

The third step is to keep it an enjoyable outing.  Some people like to go out alone and listen to music while waiting.  That’s great too, but I usually tell first-timers to go out in groups.  I especially encourage people to take their kids out.  Young eyes may see phantom meteors at first, but once they get the hang of it they’ll spot meteors too dim for you or I to spot any more.  Kids are fantastic at spotting meteors and it encourages them to be interested in the world around them.  Besides, who wouldn’t appreciate a late night out once in a while?

The most frequent question I get asked year after year has been, “Where should I look in the sky to see the meteors?”  In the past I’ve tried to describe how to find the constellation Perseus, but it’s rather unnecessary.  Accustom your eyes to the dark, and after you’ve seen three or four meteors you should be able to figure out where Perseus is in the sky all on your own!  It’s most important to look up, be relaxed and patient, and the meteors will dazzle in front of you as long as you are willing to watch.

Unfortunately, we don’t all get clear skies.  Some of us are clouded out and have no chance at spotting meteors above us, but that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck.  Follow the #meteorwatch hashtag on twitter for tips, pictures, radio observing and to share your experiences with other enthusiasts around the world.  Go to www.meteorwatch.org for news and information and be sure to follow twitter.com/VirtualAstro for fantastic coverage of the Perseid Meteor shower direct from his Astrobunker.

Mark Zaugg is an amateur astronomer and enthusiast who particularly enjoys introducing people to the excitement of seeing a meteor in person.  You can find him at twitter.com/Zarquil