Tonight we’re on a once in a lifetime pass through the dust trail of comet Kiess, a known long period comet. Margie sent me a link on the Aurigid meteor shower from NASA’s Ames Research Center website.
The Aurigid shower should be visible from the far western United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Mexico for about an hour and a half, peaking at around 4:30 a.m. PDT.
The Ames Research Center site has full details on viewing and photographing the shower and a neat java applet that lets you calculate the best viewing time based on your location, type of area, and conditions. It also give you an estimated rate per hour. Do be forewarned, however, that the page did crash my browser several times (Firefox 2.0.0.6, Mac). I could view it for awhile before the page would bite the dust.
Along with the detailed observation tips, Ames also has information on how your viewing and reporting can help them in their quest to learn more about the shower, and its patterns as observed from the ground. The more the merrier, and the better the data! While we’re on terra firma, looking up, scientists from Ames will be overhead doing an observational flight much like the one they did on the recent Perseid shower.
At a rate of close to 200 meteors per hour, the Aurigid shower should be a good one. I’m hoping that the night sky will be clear enough to see it here in the Arizona high country. The monsoons are back, so I’ll be up anyway, doing my computer work during the time of lightest thunderstorm activity.
[...] 1st, 2007 by Ariel 0500 MST, Parks, AZ – I’m just about ready to call it a night. The Aurigid Meteor Shower was well worth staying up for. I saw several dozen meteors between 0330 and 0440 MST, some of them [...]