Time for my annual shower: Eta Aquarids

UPDATE 2: Didn’t actually get up in time this morning, but there were clouds everywhere in any case.

UPDATE: I got up at 4am and everything, but no joy. All I saw was the almost total cloud cover. I’ll try again tomorrow morning, I guess Any reports from people who did see something?

Maybe this should have been my Friday Lovefest post, but I only came across it a few moments ago:

My New Scientist feed tells me that the Eta Aquarids meteor shower this year peaks on a moonless night. The Eta Aquarids meteor shower is the one of the best we see in the Southern Hemisphere. I’ve been dabbling in meteor shower-gazing ever since I saw my first Earthgrazer during the Leonids shower a couple of years ago, which resulted in excited squealing and my running around the backyard like a madwoman. I get excited easily. 

Earthgrazers are seen when the radiant of a shower is low on the horizon. At this time, debris tends to ‘graze’ the upper atmosphere in a sideways direction, creating long, bright paths across the sky. As the radiant gets higher in the sky, debris falls through the atmosphere at a steeper angle, creating much shorter paths.

For all you Northern Hemisphere readers, New Scientist has this to say about the Eta Aquarids:

Because the meteors will appear to originate from a point near the horizon as seen from the northern hemisphere, the debris tends to travel through the upper atmosphere “sideways”, producing bright meteors known as Earthgrazers. The best chance of catching these is around 0200 local time.

Question for those of you more well-versed in astronomy than me: if Earthgrazers appear when the radiant is close to the horizon, doesn’t that mean that Southern Hemisphere viewers will also see them when the radiant first rises in the east?

Even if we don’t see any Earthgrazers, Southern Hemisphereans can console themselves with the fact that we will see a higher hourly rate than our Northern counterparts (20-60 meteors, compared with 5-10 in the North).

What you need to know if you want to see this shower:

The Eta Aquarids shower is caused by Halley’s Comet. From the previously mentioned New Scientist article:

…every time it passes near the Sun on its 76-year orbit, the nucleus of the icy object sheds about 6 metres of material, which spreads out along the comet’s orbit. Twice a year, the Earth runs into this dusty detritus, producing the eta Aquarids in May and the Orionids in October.

You will be able to see meteors from this shower if you get up before sunrise in the next few days, but the best time to see the shower in Oz is before sunrise on Monday 5th May (although viewing should be pretty good on Sunday 4th May and Tuesday 6 May, as well). Look to the east, as the meteors will appear to be radiating from the constellation of Aquarius. More information on this shower, from the International Meteor Organisation, can be found here.

I’m gonna be sleepy at work next week!