The first meteor shower of 2020 is almost here. The Quadrantid meteor shower looks to be a short one, it will be strongly visible from our home planet. According to CBS News, it’s expected to peak Friday night, Jan. 3, before pushing into Saturday morning. An annual event, the meteor shower occurs in early January and is the result of leftover comet particles and broken pieces of an asteroid as it comes around the sun which emits a dusty trail that the Earth passes through.
While they’re not as popular as the Geminid meteor showers in December, NASA calls it one of the “best annual meteor showers,” even though it only lasts six short hours. During that window, anywhere from 60 to 200 can be seen per hour, and is most visible from the northern hemisphere.
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In order to get the best view, the first thing you’ll want to do is get away from all the light pollution cities tend to have, which can greatly hinder the view of the night sky. Once you’ve found a quiet spot, lie flat on your back and face the northeast. The Quandratid’s will start being visible by around 3 AM EST, but you’ll want to give your eyes about thirty minutes to adjust to the darkness, so plan accordingly.
Almost exactly two years ago, a meteor exploded while passing over Michigan, which ended up causing an earthquake that registered a 2.0 on the Richter scale.
“We have calculated that this was a very slow-moving meteor — speed of about 28,000 miles per hour,” the NASA Media Watch confirmed at the time. “This fact, combined with the brightness of the meteor (which suggests a fairly big space rock at least a yard across), shows that the object penetrated deep into the atmosphere before it broke apart (which produced the sounds heard by many observers). It is likely that there are meteorites on the ground near this region — one of our colleagues has found a Doppler weather radar signature characteristic of meteoritic material falling to earth.”
Bill Cooke, who leads NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, estimated that the meteor was six to nine feet across, weighed more than a ton, and traveled between 40,000 to 50,000 miles to get to Earth.
Cooke also stressed that this kind of thing happening in Michigan was rare, but said this kind of thing “happens they happen a few times every month” across the globe.
Happy meteor watching!
