Friday's Northern Taurid Meteor Shower

I have not been to one of my local astronomy club meetings in quite a while so I thought that since there in one tonight I would catch up with what is happening in the world of astronomy. The first thing that I did was look at events that are going to occur in the near future and I was surprised to see that I was about to miss the Taurid meteor shower. I love meteor shower and I hate missing out on them.




Because of our location and the time of the year we are about to observe the Northern Taurids. The frequency of the shower should be anything from about 5 to 8 meteors coming from the constellation of Taurus - hence it's name. The showers will start on Friday and end on Sunday morning with some stray meteors that might be seen in the weeks before and after the main stream. The content of the shower is actually larger than just dust and sometimes we can see bolides with spectacular light shows and if you are in a place that is quiet enough you can even hear them.



The Taurids are said to be part of a large comet that came close to earth sometime in the last 30 000 years and that has slowly broken up into the debris that we see and the comet Encke. Currently most people say that the cause of the shower is the comet Encke and they are not wrong but there was a larger source as previously mentioned.



There is actually much more to the shower than I have mentioned. Due to the break up, over a long period of time, of the original comet it has caused a very large stream of matter which is considered the largest in the inner solar system. It is so large that the Earth takes a couple of weeks to pass through it causing an extended period of meteor activity.



Due to the trajectory of the original comet and gravitational effects of the planets the Taurids have spread over time creating what we call the Northern and Southern Taurids. We have also got the Beta Taurids that occur in June/July that fall part of the mentioned band of matter.



The Taurids have peaks every 300 years but there are smaller peaks that occur every once in a while that cannot be predicted. So every time you go out to see a shower you don’t really know how spectacular the shower is really going to be.



I have looked at the planned weather for the 3 days of the showers and it does not look good for me. The weather forecast is for rain from Friday evening until sometime next week. If I am lucky, this cold front will only hit in the early hours of Saturday morning so at least I will have Friday to watch the showers.