05/22/2014 – Ephemeris – Meteor storms past and maybe this Saturday morning

Ephemeris for Thursday, May 22nd.  Today the sun will be up for 15 hours and 3 minutes, setting at 9:11.   The moon, 1 day past last quarter, will rise at 3:14 tomorrow morning.  Tomorrow the sun will rise at 6:06.

The meteors from Comet 209P/LINEAR have not been completely unseen in the past, but their occurrence had never piqued the interest of meteor observers before.  So the comet has left debris in its orbit.  Some astronomers have been doing calculations on the orbital dynamics of a hypothetical meteor sward that may have developed near the comet.  These swarms are not unprecedented.  There’s the Leonid meteor storms that come every 33 years around November 17th that occur when its comet is near the Earth.  Another is the less dramatic Draconids of early October, when its comet Giacobini-Zinner is in the neighborhood.  The meteor storm is expected to peak around 3 a.m. this Saturday morning the 24th.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

A famous woodcut of the 1833 Leonid meteor storm.

A photograph of the 1966 Leonid meteor storm by A. Scott Murrell. 40 meteors can be counted in the 10-12 minute exposure. Credit: P. Jenniskens/NASA-ARC http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/.