Earth is expected to pass through the debris trail of a broken comet on Monday night and early Tuesday morning. It could result in a brand new meteor shower.
Night sky watchers in North America have the best chance of seeing the tau Herculid shower, with NASA recommending around 1 a.m. on the East Coast or 10 p.m. on the West Coast as the best times to look up. The moon is new, so there will be no moonlight to obscure the meteors.
By the time SW3 passed Earth again in 2006, it was in nearly 70 pieces, and has continued to fragment further since then, the statement said. Some meteor showers have been around for centuries. For example, the Perseid meteor shower, which occurs each year in August, was first observed about 2,000 years ago and recorded by Chinese astronomers, NASA said. New meteor showers like this one, should it materialize, are relatively rare.The debris from SW3 will strike Earth's atmosphere slower than other meteor showers and it's the velocity at which the debris strikes rather than the size of the debris that causes the shower.
Meteor showers are typically named after the constellation from where they appear to radiate in the night sky although Robert Lunsford, secretary general of the International Meteor Organization, said that the tau Herculids had been incorrectly named. He said they will appear to radiate from a constellation known as Bootes, northwest of the brilliant orange star known as Arcturus .
The Delta Aquariids are best seen from the southern tropics and will peak between July 28 and 29, when the moon is 74% full.
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