The Quadrantid meteor bathe might be about to set the usual for 2022 – simply days after it begins.
The spectacle will mild up January’s chilly and darkish skies with as many as 50 meteors an hour.
It’ll peak on 3-4 January, with the brightest second coming simply earlier than 9pm UK time (4pm EST) on 3 January. Relative to different meteor showers, the height is particularly key: inside a few hours, the variety of meteors drops by as a lot as 50 per cent.
Circumstances for the present are particularly good this 12 months. It arrives not lengthy after the New Moon, which means that the sky must be particularly darkish.
And as with all meteor showers, no specific experience or tools is required to see it. Simply head out someplace darkish if attainable, look as much as the sky and permit your eyes to regulate, which ought to imply you may spot the streaks of sunshine as they shoot throughout the sky.
Meteor showers occur when the Earth passes by way of a cloud of particles left behind by comets and asteroids. As they collide with our environment, they mild up, streaking throughout the night time sky.
The Quadrantids seem when Earth strikes by way of particles left from the near-Earth asteroid (196256) 2003 EH1.. That could be the identical extinct comet that was seen by Chinese language astronomers greater than 500 years in the past.
They get their title from the constellation Quadrans Muralis, from which they seem to emerge, and which has since been deserted and lives on primarily by way of the title of the meteor bathe. These days, the constellation the place the lights seem to come back from is named Bootes, and is close to the Plough.
Kaynak: briturkish.com
