Tonight's night sky will feature a rare event: The birth of a new meteor shower. Viewers in North America will have the best chance to catch this cosmic show, which could become an annual occurrence. But if skies are cloudy or lights too bright where you are, catch two live webcasts from the Slooh Space Camera and NASA, the first starting at 3 p.m. PT/6 p.m. ET and the second beginning at 8 p.m. PT/ 11 p.m. ET.
The sun's heat causes a comet's frozen surface to sublime, kicking off chunks of rock and ice. These form a faint dusty ring that spans the comet's orbit. Meteor showers occur when the Earth slams into this debris field. The chunks will burn up in our atmosphere, creating shooting streaks in the night sky.
Tonight's meteor shower is brought to you by comet 209P/LINEAR, a faint object that was only discovered in 2004. Because its orbit is tilted slightly relative to ours, the Earth has never before run through this particular comet's debris field. But this year, the stars (or icy planetoid objects) literally aligned and our planet is expected to pass right through some of the densest debris that 209P/LINEAR has left behind during its travels around the sun. Note: These bits of space litter are very small and will burn up harmlessly in our atmosphere.
The new meteor shower has been given the tongue-twisting nickname of the Camelopardalids, after the constellation Camelopardalid, from which they will appear to radiate in the sky. The name of this relatively unfamiliar constellation translates as giraffe, because ancient Greeks thought that giraffes looked like a cross between a camel and a leopard (they sort of do). Because this is the first time we've seen this meteor shower, astronomers don't know how many fireballs to expect. But some predictions suggest there could be as many as 200 meteors per hour, a shower that would surpass nearly ever other major one of the year, including the spectacular Geminids.
But the brand new Camelopardalids could always turn out to be somewhat less than impressive. Nobody is quite sure how much debris dropped off comet 209P/LINEAR at this particular point in its orbit. If the show ends up being great, it could become a regular feature of the annual meteor shower calendar. Other reliable meteor showers, like the August Perseids, have been observed annually for over 2,000 years. But according to astronomer Ethan Siegel, "we’ve never witnessed the birth of a meteor shower in all of recorded human history," potentially making this a real night to remember.
Tonight's first Slooh show will start while the sun is still up for much of North America, using telescopes in the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. The second show will broadcast live feeds from Arizona, just before the new meteor shower is expected to peak. Slooh's experts will be joined by scientists from NASA including astronomer Peter Jenniskens, who discovered 209P/LINEAR. If you want to get out and see the meteors with your own eyes, you'll need to drive to a place far from city lights. Give your eyes at least half an hour to adjust to the dark and then look up and to the north between midnight and 2 a.m. PT (3 a.m. to 5 a.m. ET) for best results.
Video: 1) Slooh 2) NASA
