Autumn is rightly a good time to look for shooting stars. Get out on any transparent night and stargaze for an hour and you will surely see at least one meteorite flash in the afternoon sky.
Importantly, this weekend is interrupted with the rising of the full Moon – the “Hunter’s Moon” – which will be most productive at dusk on Sunday, October 9 and Monday, October 10, 2022 as it rises in the east.
Its brightness will make shooting stars harder to see than in a dark, moonless sky. However, this slight drawback is compensated by the peak of the Draconid meteor shower.
Seemingly emanating from a region of the night sky occupied by the constellation Draco “the Dragon,” the Draconids can number around 20 depending on the time of their peak, which will peak this year on Friday, October 8, 2022 according to American Meteor. Society.
The Moon probably wouldn’t help detect them, of course, but Draconids are rare because they’re just as easily visible after dark as they are at any other time. the obvious source (i. e. , the domain of Earth’s environment that meteorites hit) is above.
Draco is a large serpent-shaped constellation between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor in the northern sky. It is a circumpolar constellation that never sets. This means that it is visual all night because, like Ursa Major, it revolves around Polaris, the “North Star,” toward which the Earth’s northern axis points. Therefore, you can see the Draconids in the north as soon as it gets dark on Fridays and all night.
All you want to do is regularly look northwest (keep your back toward the bright Moon and Jupiter toward the east) and, with a bit of luck, spot a Draconid, which moves relatively slowly. Fast-moving rays of light, if you hint at those paths, reach the northern sky.
This also means that Draconids can be noticed in the Northern Hemisphere.
Comets leave a trail of debris and dust called meteorites as they travel through space, especially as they approach the Sun. When a comet’s trajectory crosses Earth’s orbital path around the Sun, it leaves behind a stream of meteorites that Earth will inevitably have. to spend once a year.
The source of the Draconids is a comet called 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, which in 1985 was the first comet visited via a spacecraft, the International Cometary Explorer (ICE) satellite. It was the last time in the inner sun formula in 2018 and will recede in 2025, so the Draconids are a meteor shower that cools.
I wish you transparent skies and big eyes.