Heads Up For Tonight’s (Potential) Meteor Shower!

Allow me to be the 3,279th person to use some variant on that “heads up” headline for tonight’s meteor shower.

This one’s been getting a lot of press, which is often a bad sign given the mainstream media’s track record of being clueless, hyperbolic, and totally inaccurate when it comes to science in general and astronomy in particular. If you’re in North America, you’ll probably see something in the paper today, on the local news tonight, or online about “This Year’s Best Meteor Shower!!”

Maybe.

First, the buzzkill, with lots of qualifiers emphasized.

There is a meteor shower predicted to peak tonight, and the timing’s good for most North American observers. If you want to stay up a bit (or get up early) and have a clear sky, you might get a show.

The thing is, meteor showers are almost as bad as comets when it comes to predicting how they’ll manifest. On top of that you’ve got the media’s obsession with blowing everything out of proportion. On top of that you’ve got the general misunderstanding by the public of what they should expect to see.

So the amateur astronomical community puts out the word that this may be the best shower of the year. It may be, but that’s mainly because most of the other big, bright, and predictable meteor showers will be occurring at or near the full moon, so you’ll see only the very brightest of the meteors. Everything else will be washed out by the bright moonlight. The astronomical observing community knows that it’s a crap shoot to begin with and “best” is relative. It’s possible that someone in a clear, dark sky could see close to 100 meteors an hour. But it will probably be less than that, and if you’re in a city where the dim meteors are washed out by streetlights, you might see only ten or fifteen an hour. Maybe.

Then the local news gets the story, doesn’t read the astronomical news bulletins completely, doesn’t understand the qualifiers, and doesn’t pay any attention to the actual facts or details. The headlines for folks in New York or Miami or Los Angeles ends up being something along the lines of “Go Outside After Dark, Look North, And See 100 Meteors An Hour, It Will Be Spectacular!”

Then the general public, many of whom have never seen a meteor but most of whom have seen lots of movies (remember the endings of “Independence Day”, “Deep Impact,” and “Gravity?”) go out with bad information and worse expectations. And one more time, the opinion of Joe and Jane Public is that scientists don’t really have a clue and they’ve cried wolf one more time.

Now for what I hope is an upbeat and accurate description of what we know for tonight.

This meteor shower is a fairly unknown one and comes from a periodic comet first discovered in 2004. Earth’s orbit only is in the right position to intersect the estimated position of the orbiting dust cloud that trails along behind the comet every few years. The dust clouds we’ll be passing through tonight were left behind in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, but we don’t know how big they are or exactly where they are or how dense they are.

If the estimates are correct, there could be a shower of from 100 to 400 meteors an hour, if you’re someplace with a clear, dark sky. If you’re in a city or if it’s hazy, you might see a fraction of that.

The best news is that, like a total lunar eclipse, you don’t need any equipment at all to see the show. Get a lawn chair or a comfy spot on a blanket, face due north, give it a few minutes to let your eyes become dark adapted, relax and see how many meteors you see.

The prime viewing time is estimated to be between 2 AM and 4 AM in the Eastern time zone, 11 PM to 1 AM in the Pacific time zone. You could see meteors before that, you might see them after that, but that’s an estimate for when the peak will be.

If you want to try to take pictures, get a camera that can be set on “Bulb” to stay open as long as you hold the shutter open, and mount it on a tripod. Set the lens for as wide a field as you can, open up the lens to its lowest f-stop, turn the autofocus off, and set the focus to infinity. Point it north and if you start seeing meteors, start taking pictures. If you’re in a dark, clear sky you can probably go for exposures of three or four minutes. If you’re in the city, maybe two minutes tops. With longer exposures in the city, the light pollution will start to “fog” the image. Even in a dark sky, longer digital exposures will start to get corrupted by “noise” unless you’re cooling the camera. (That’s waaaaaay beyond the level of this discussion — some other time.)

Of course, what have we learned over and over with digital photography? Digital is cheap, take LOTS of pictures! So, as you did with the lunar eclipse and comets, take a lot of pictures and bracket your exposures. Start at maybe five or ten seconds, build up to twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a minute, and so on. It’s going to be a game of chance no matter what you do, so play the game as many times as you can to increase your odds.

If it works and you get some pictures, please feel free to share them here, I would love to post them for you.

Unless it’s cloudy, think about going out and taking a peek for at least a half-hour or so, even if it’s not during those “peak” hours. With luck it’s a nice night, you can find a comfy spot, put on some bug spray, and just chill for a bit watching the skies. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the show will be spectacular (but don’t bet the house on it) and you’ll get to say that you saw it.

Clear skies and good luck!