The most important and spectacular astronomical event of the beginning of the year is the arrival of the Quadrantids meteor shower – we read in the press release.
According to reports, this is a meteor shower that ideally attracts an average of 130 shooting stars per hour in the northern sky, thus competing with the Perseids in August (average maximum of 84) and the Geminids in December (average maximum of 88 swarms). meteors per hour).
Shooting stars, or meteors, are made up of dust particles and pieces of rock that hurtle through space at speeds several times faster than a spaceship. A long, brightly lit ion channel is created in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, which people see as a shooting star.
The main object of the Quadrantid meteor shower is the asteroid 2003 EH1, just 3 kilometers in diameter. Interestingly, asteroids rarely produce clouds of debris in their orbits that form the basis of meteor showers. However, the strange celestial body is still responsible for the Quadrantid meteor shower, which suggests that 2003 EH1 is actually the nucleus of comet C/1490 Y1, observed by astronomers in the Far East five hundred years ago. This object may have left behind the thin cloud of dust that encounters Earth every year in early January, passing through our planet’s orbit around the Sun, they wrote.
According to information, the best time to observe the Quadrantids is Thursday before sunrise. The shower’s brilliance reaches its highest point at six in the morning and will approach the height above the horizon of eighty degrees in the eastern sky. “The Moon won’t help us this time, it’s relatively close to the radiant, it will shine in the constellation Virgo in a 49 percent phase, which will definitely make it difficult to spot the magnitude 3-6 meteors that make up most of the Quadrantids,” they add. At the same time, the shower also abounds in very bright fireballs, so with a favorable sky there is a good chance that a spectacular and memorable shooting star will form. The only thing to do is look for a dark area, free from city lights – like in Budapest, for example, Normafa or Hármashatár-hegy – we read in the announcement.
A detailed description of the phenomenon and its observation can be found in Svábhegy Observatory on the side.
2023-12-31 06:30:00
#spectacular #shooting #star #expected #early #January