Related Research Articles
Boötes is a constellation in the northern sky, located between 0° and +60° declination, and 13 and 16 hours of right ascension on the celestial sphere. The name comes from Latin: Boōtēs, which comes from Greek: Βοώτης, translit. Boṓtēs 'herdsman' or 'plowman'.
Canis Minor is a small constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere. In the second century, it was included as an asterism, or pattern, of two stars in Ptolemy's 48 constellations, and it is counted among the 88 modern constellations. Its name is Latin for "lesser dog", in contrast to Canis Major, the "greater dog"; both figures are commonly represented as following the constellation of Orion the hunter.
The Leonids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel–Tuttle, which are also known for their spectacular meteor storms that occur about every 33 years. The Leonids get their name from the location of their radiant in the constellation Leo: the meteors appear to radiate from that point in the sky. Their proper Greek name should be Leontids, but the word was initially constructed as a Greek/Latin hybrid and it has been used since. The meteor shower peak should be on November 17, 2022, but any outburst is likely to be from the 1733 meteoroid stream.
The zodiacal light is a faint glow of diffuse sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust. Brighter around the Sun, it appears in a particularly dark night sky to extend from the Sun's direction in a roughly triangular shape along the zodiac, and appears with less intensity and visibility along the whole ecliptic as the zodiacal band. Zodiacal light spans the entire sky and contributes to the natural light of a clear and moonless night sky. A related phenomenon is gegenschein, sunlight backscattered from the interplanetary dust, appearing directly opposite to the Sun as a faint but slightly brighter oval glow.
A meteoroid is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space.
A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories. Most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand, so almost all of them disintegrate and never hit the Earth's surface. Very intense or unusual meteor showers are known as meteor outbursts and meteor storms, which produce at least 1,000 meteors an hour, most notably from the Leonids. The Meteor Data Centre lists over 900 suspected meteor showers of which about 100 are well established. Several organizations point to viewing opportunities on the Internet. NASA maintains a daily map of active meteor showers.
The Quadrantids (QUA) are a meteor shower that peaks in early January and whose radiant lies in the constellation Boötes. The zenithal hourly rate (ZHR) of this shower can be as high as that of two other reliably rich meteor showers, the Perseids in August and the Geminids in December, yet Quadrantid meteors are not seen as often as those of the two other showers because the time frame of the peak is exceedingly narrow, sometimes lasting only hours. Moreover, the meteors are quite faint, with mean apparent magnitudes between 3.0 and 6.0.
Pavo is a constellation in the southern sky whose name is Latin for "peacock". Pavo first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in 1598 in Amsterdam by Plancius and Jodocus Hondius and was depicted in Johann Bayer's star atlas Uranometria of 1603, and was likely conceived by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman. French explorer and astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille gave its stars Bayer designations in 1756. The constellations Pavo, Grus, Phoenix and Tucana are collectively known as the "Southern Birds".
The Beta Taurids (β–Taurids) are an annual meteor shower belonging to a class of "daytime showers" that peak after sunrise. The Beta Taurids are best observed by radar and radio-echo techniques.
The Southern Delta Aquariids are a meteor shower visible from mid July to mid August each year with peak activity on 28 or 29 July. The Comet of origin is not known with certainty. Suspected candidate is Comet 96P Machholz. Earlier, it was thought to have originated from the Marsden and Kracht Sungrazing comets.
The Taurids are an annual meteor shower, associated with the comet Encke. The Taurids are actually two separate showers, with a Southern and a Northern component. The Southern Taurids originated from Comet Encke, while the Northern Taurids originated from the asteroid 2004 TG10, possibly a large fragment of Encke due to its similar orbital parameters. They are named after their radiant point in the constellation Taurus, where they are seen to come from in the sky. Because of their occurrence in late October and early November, they are also called Halloween fireballs.
The Orionids meteor shower, often shortened to the Orionids, is the most prolific meteor shower associated with Halley's Comet. The Orionids are so-called because the point they appear to come from, called the radiant, lies in the constellation Orion, but they can be seen over a large area of the sky. The Orionids are an annual meteor shower which last approximately one week in late October. In some years, meteors may occur at rates of 50–70 per hour.
Petrus Matheus Marie (Peter) Jenniskens is a Dutch-American astronomer and a senior research scientist at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute and at NASA Ames Research Center. He is an expert on meteor showers, and wrote the book Meteor Showers and their Parent Comets published in 2006. He is president of Commission 22 of the International Astronomical Union (2012-2015) and was chair of the Working Group on Meteor Shower Nomenclature (2006–2012) after it was first established. Asteroid 42981 Jenniskens is named in his honor.
The Andromedids meteor shower is associated with Biela's Comet, the showers occurring as Earth passes through old streams left by the comet's tail. The comet was observed to have broken up by 1846; further drift of the pieces by 1852 suggested the moment of breakup was in either 1842 or early 1843, when the comet was near Jupiter. The breakup led to particularly spectacular showers in subsequent cycles.
Alpha Capricornids is a meteor shower that takes place as early as 7 July and continues until around 15 August. The meteor shower was discovered by Hungarian astronomer Miklos von Konkoly-Thege in 1871. This shower has infrequent but relatively bright meteors, with some fireballs. Parent body is comet 169P/NEAT.
The Alpha Monocerotids is a meteor shower active from 15 to 25 November, with its peak occurring on 21 or 22 November. The speed of its meteors is 65 km/s, which is close to the maximum possible speed for meteors of about 73 km/s. Normally it has a low Zenithal Hourly Rate (ZHR), but occasionally it produces much more intense meteor storms that last less than an hour: such outbursts were observed in 1925, 1935, 1985, and 1995. The 1925 and 1935 storms both reached levels passing 1,000 ZHR.
(196256) 2003 EH1 is an asteroid, classified as near-Earth object of the Amor group. It was discovered on 6 March 2003, by astronomers of the LONEOS program at Anderson Mesa Station near Flagstaff, Arizona, in the United States. Peter Jenniskens (2003–2004) proposed that it is the parent body of the Quadrantid meteor shower. 2003 EH1 is likely an extinct comet and may even be related to the comet C/1490 Y1. 2003 EH1 came to perihelion on 12 March 2014.
CAMS is a NASA-sponsored international project that tracks and triangulates meteors during night-time video surveillance in order to map and monitor meteor showers. Data processing is housed at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute in California, USA. Goal of CAMS is to validate the International Astronomical Union's Working List of Meteor Showers, discover new meteor showers, and predict future meteor showers.
C/1917 F1 (Mellish), also known as Comet 1917Ι and 1917a, is a halley-type comet discovered by John E. Mellish on 19 March 1917. The comet has an orbital period of 143 years and last passed perihelion on 11 April 1917. It is the parent body of the December Monocerotids and has also being suggested to be the parent body of April ρ-Cygnids, November Orionids, and Canis-Minorids meteor showers.
References
- ↑ Jenniskens, Peter (2006). Meteor Showers and Their Parent Comets. Cambridge University Press. pp. 200, 769. ISBN 978-0-521-85349-1.
- ↑ Hindley, K. B.; Houlden, M. A. (1970). "The 11 Canis Minorids—A New Meteor Stream Probably Associated with Comet Mellish 1917 I". Nature. 225 (5239): 1232–33. Bibcode:1970Natur.225.1232H. doi:10.1038/2251232a0. PMID 16057004. S2CID 4170596.
- ↑ Vereš, P.; Kornoš, L.; Tóth, J. (2011). "Meteor Showers of Comet C/1917 F1 Mellish". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . 412 (1): 511–521. arXiv: 1010.5733 . Bibcode:2011MNRAS.412..511V. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.17923.x. S2CID 119297606.
- ↑ Levy, David H. (2007). David Levy's Guide to Observing Meteor Showers. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-521-69691-3.
