This month’s Southern Taurids meteor shower will fill the sky with brilliant fireballs

() — It doesn’t matter that Halloween is over, because “Halloween fireballs”, as NASA calls themwill still shine in the night sky for weeks to come, thanks to the Southern Taurids meteor shower.

The estimated peak of the rain is not until Saturday, November 5, according to EarthSkyand the Taurids are famous for producing the most fireballs and the brightest, meteors that can appear brighter than the planet Venus.

This year’s shower is expected to include an increased number of meteors, known as taurid swarms. The Southern Taurids usually present only about five meteors per hour around its peak, the point at which the Earth is closest to the center of the meteor stream. But every seven years, Jupiter’s gravity tugs on the meteor stream, causing their numbers to spike.

“With the normal rate of fireballs, someone would have to sit outside for 20 hours at a time to see one,” said Robert Lunsford, fireball report coordinator for the American Meteor Society. “With the Taurids, (that time) can be reduced quite a bit, maybe up to five hours. And if you’re really lucky, you can go outside and see one in a few minutes. The time they show up is totally unpredictable.”

Origin of the Taurids

The Taurids are the result of the breakup of a very large comet about 20,000 years ago. Among other debris, that breakup created Comet Encke, which has an orbit around the Sun of just over three years, the shortest of any major comet in our solar system. Every time it passes the Earth in its short orbit, it leaves behind a trail of debris. This trail includes the Southern Taurids, which are a cluster so large that it takes our planet several weeks to traverse it.

“Most meteor showers contain small bits of dust. Well, the Taurids … also have some large particles,” said Bill Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “And you see, while the rain is active, not dust particles, but particles the size of small pebbles, and some (that) are the size of a soccer ball and larger, which of course, produce very bright fireballs. “.

See a ball of fire

The fireballs of the Taurids are meteors of more than a meter in diameter, and they shine exceptionally, according to NASA. They move slowly because they hit Earth’s atmosphere at a perpendicular angle, so they can be seen moving across the sky for a few seconds, compared to the milliseconds of visibility most meteors offer. According to Lunsford, the brightest and longest-lived meteors can be seen fragmenting and falling apart as they streak across the sky. Fireballs are often colorful, appearing red, orange, or yellow.

“It would be like a shooting star,” said Mike Hankey, chief operating officer of the American Meteor Society and creator of its fireball tracking program. “But instead of lasting half a second, it could last three or four seconds, and instead of being as bright as a star, it could be as bright as the moon, sometimes even brighter.”

This year, the Meteor Society has already recorded a higher-than-average increase in fireballs, while NASA has photographed fireballs that appear to be even brighter than the moon in the night sky.

According to Lunsford, the best time to go out to see a fireball will be at 2 a.m. local time during the next week. As the moon approaches its full moon phase, set for November 8, its brightness will begin to alter the chances of seeing fainter meteors, but fireballs, due to their size and brightness, can be seen anywhere of the world, at any hour of the night.

Other space events this year

There are four other meteor showers that can be seen in the remainder of 2022, according to the guide EarthSky Meteor Showers of 2022:

• November 12: Northern Taurids
• November 18: Leonidas
• December 14: Geminids
• December 22: Ursids

And there are two more full moons on the calendar The Old Farmer’s Almanac 2022:

• November 8: Beaver Moon (which will peak alongside a total lunar eclipse)
• December 7: Cold Moon