The Quadrantid meteor bathe could possibly be about to set the usual for 2022 – simply days after it begins.
The spectacle will gentle up January’s chilly and darkish skies with as many as 50 meteors an hour.
It would peak on 3-4 January, with the brightest second coming simply earlier than 9pm UK time 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.
Situations for the present are particularly good this yr. It arrives not lengthy after the New Moon, which means that the sky ought to be particularly darkish.
And as with all meteor showers, no explicit experience or tools is required to see it. Simply head out someplace darkish if doable, look as much as the sky and permit your eyes to regulate, which ought to imply you’ll be able to spot the streaks of sunshine as they shoot throughout the sky.
Meteor showers occur when the Earth passes via a cloud of particles left behind by comets and asteroids. As they collide with our ambiance, they gentle up, streaking throughout the evening sky.
The Quadrantids seem when Earth strikes via 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 via the title of the meteor bathe. These days, the constellation the place the lights seem to come back from is called Bootes, and is close to the Plough.
Kaynak: briturkish.com
