NASA estimates that the brightest meteors that will be seen this year are expected to be the brightest meteors that will be seen this year in the Coandertide shower, a modest shower that falls every year in January and is spread over an entire week.
In the coming week, a scattered meteor shower will fall on us, and it will be well visible all over the world. This is the Quadranantids meteor, which finds its meteors (the point in the sky from which they seem to come out) in a constellation that has been canceled in the meantime and its stars have been divided among other groups - the Quadran Moralis. In principle, every meteor seen in the sky from the direction of Arcturus belongs to this meteor. This is a very narrow stream of meteors which, according to recent scientific data, was created by a cosmic collision.
The studies show that the grains of dust and stones that make up the Chondrantid shower were probably formed about five hundred years ago in a collision between a near-Earth asteroid named 2003 EH1 and a comet that collided with each other. Historical data from ancient China place comet C/1490 Y1 (which, according to its name, was discovered in the sky in 1490) as an object that was on the correct course to collide with the asteroid.
Jupiter's gravity confused the flow, and so in about 400 years this meter will disappear like the constellation it belonged to. However, NASA scientists and other astronomers will look to the sky to investigate the event. Most meteor showers occur when the Earth's orbit collides with remnants left from the tail of a comet that passed by years earlier. be relatively sparse.
An executive plane will fly scientists and their instruments for ten consecutive hours over the Arctic region to observe and record meteor activity. From the air, the scientists will be able to study the meteors without disturbing the light pollution and without blocking the clouds in order to determine when the peak occurs and what is the dispersion of the current. "We will fly to the North Pole and back to compensate for the Earth's rotation and maintain a view of the meteor stream during the entire flight," says Peter Ganniskens, principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center.
According to NASA, this shower is expected to produce the brightest meteors in 2008. Over 100 meteors per hour are expected at the peak of the shower. The estimated viewing times when a high rate of meteors is expected are the late evening hours of January 3rd over Europe and Western Asia and the early morning hours of the -January 4th over the eastern US. According to the NASA website, on January 4 between midnight and eight in the morning (Israel time) the peak is expected to be visible in Europe (at night, of course). This means that you should wear warm clothes and try to fight the light of the waning moon, but even one bright shooting star can make the journey worthwhile.
Will the meter of the quandrants live up to the promises? No one knows for sure, but it's worth waiting.
We will be happy to report to the website readers if an observation is organized.
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On the 4th of the month in the morning, in a general direction quite north according to the map
The only question is where - maybe as you get closer to Eilat. The forecaster predicts quite wintry weather in most areas of the country.
In Israel - on what day and at what time and where in the sky?
It's a shame that Behirim actually said that there will be a storm and cold fear on Thursday 🙁