Camelopardalid Meteor Shower Date and When to Watch: Rare Cosmic Event to Bring Hundred of Meteors an Hour
Anyone with a clear view looking up into the night sky on May 23 will get to see a stellar light show as Earth intersects with the debris trail of a passing comet.
While meteor showers vary in intensity, astronomers expect the Camelopardalid meteor shower to produce hundreds of meteors per hour and can be seen till the early morning hours of May 24.
Earth is no stranger to meteor showers, the phenomenon occurs quite often as the planet passes through the debris of little rock chunks leftover from orbiting comets.
However, the Camelopardalid meteor shower marks the first time Earth passes through the debris leftover from Comet 209/LINEAR, a very dim comet that comes around every five years, USA Today reported.
The Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research project, a partnership between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory, NASA and the U.S. Air Force, first discovered the comet in 2004.
Astronomers predict that Earth is going to pass through all of the comet's debris trails from 1803 to 1924, which would make Camelopardalid more of a meteor storm, according to USA Today.
Rich Talcott, senior editor for Astronomy magazine, said despite the uncertainty this historical event will produce such an epic sighting, astronomers' predictions are usually on point.
"That's always a good question, more so with this meteor shower because it's the first time we're seeing it," Talcott said. "Over the past 15 or 20 years, astronomers have done a very good job at figuring out, 'OK, here's where the debris streams will lie.' I'm thinking the odds are pretty good we'll get something nice May 24."
Like all meteor showers, Camelopardalid gets its name from the constellation in which the meteors seem to radiate, which astronomers call the radiant, Today reported.
Camelopardalid will come from the constellation Cameloparadlis, known as the giraffe, which is considered a circumpolar constellation, meaning it goes around the North Star Polaris, rather than moving from east to west in the nigh sky.
Stargazers living in the southern states of the U.S. will get a better view of the event, Carol Stewart, astronomer at the Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium in Fort Myers, Florida, told USA Today.
"In Southwest Florida, we have an advantage over Northern latitudes because the meteors will come in at us from a lower altitude," Stewart said. "Those are called 'Earth-grazers,' and they're longer-lasting and run farther across the sky."
The moon, which will be a waning crescent, will not rise until after 3 a.m. on May 24 and won't affect the meteor shower. The best time to view the shower will be between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. but the shower could start much earlier, Stewart said.
"They could start as soon as it gets dark the night of the 23rd," she said. "I'm going to go out and check every hour. We don't know because this is the first time, and I don't want to miss it."