We’ve only been in 2016 for a couple of days, and already stargazers will have their first chance to see a meteor shower, as the Quadrantids are expected to peak during the night and early morning hours of January 3 and January 4, NASA officials confirmed earlier this week.
According to the US space agency, meteor rates are expected to increase after midnight and peak between 3 am and dawn, local time. The western US will have a better look at the show than the east coast.
The Quadrantids peak in early January each year, NASA explained, and “are considered to be one of the best annual meteor showers.” Unlike many other meteor showers, they have a rather brief peak (only a few hours versus two days), but during that time, between 60 and 200 can be seen per hour in perfect viewing conditions.
Unfortunately, as Gizmodo pointed out, the Quadrantids can also be one of the most difficult meteor showers to observe, due largely to the small window of peak activity. On the plus side, the waning crescent moon in the sky this weekend should not create any interference.
A meteor shower, a dead comet and a disappearing constellation
Unlike many meteor showers, the Quadrantids are not the result of debris from an ordinary kind of comet, according to Gizmodo. Instead, they are fragments of a dead comet, or asteroid, known as asteroid 2003 EH1 that takes more than five years to complete one journey around the sun.
2003 EH1 is what is known as a “rock comet” and was discovered on March 6, 2003, by experts at the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth Object Search (LONEOS). It is only about 3 kilometers in diameter, and debris from this object burning up in the atmosphere causes the Quadrantids.
Like most meteor showers, the Quadrantids were named for a constellation that gives them their radiant, but unlike the Perseids or the Leonids, its constellation is now obsolete. Created in 1795 by French astronomer Jerome Lalande, the constellation “Quadrans Muralis” was removed from the International Astronomical Union (IAU) list of modern constellations in 1922.
“Quadrans Muralis was a super-constellation composed of a combination of stars that are now part of three constellations: The Big Dipper, Bootes, and Dracos,” Gizmodo explained. “It was cut almost 100 years ago in favor of a more distinct grouping of three individual constellations – but not before it had given its name to the meteor shower we’ll see this weekend.”
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Image credit: Thinkstock
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