The Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower should peak Monday night, the 5th of May at 07:00 Universal Time (or midnight Mountain Time, 11pm Pacific Time), but the best viewing times (due to the Moon and a low Eastern radiant) will a few hours before dawn Tuesday morning, around 4am to 5am.<\/p>\n
At the peak, up to 55 meteors could be seen each hour.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>They’re pretty fast, at 66km\/second, often bright with very long paths, and leave persistent glowing trails.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The source of the meteors is debris from Halley’s comet.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>The Comet’s orbital path contains dust particles and ice (thinned out in spots by Jupiter).<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>The Earth crosses the orbital path of Halley’s Comet twice each year.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>In May we see it as the Eta Aquarid meteor shower and in October the Orionids.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Eta Aquarids should be best seen early Tuesday morning. The Moon will have set by then, so it will be seen under a dark sky.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>The radiant is low in the Eastern sky, in Aquarius, which rises around 4am.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>So half the meteors will be unseen below the horizon.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n For more information, see <\/span>http:\/\/www.imo.net\/calendar\/2014#eta<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Rick Nowell<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n College of the Rockies<\/p>\n Cranbrook, BC, Canada<\/p>\n 49\u00b031’03″N, 115\u00b044’37″W, 940m<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower should peak Monday night, the 5th of May at 07:00 Universal Time (or midnight Mountain Time, 11pm Pacific Time), but the best viewing times (due to the Moon and a low Eastern radiant) will a few hours before dawn Tuesday morning, around 4am to 5am. At the peak, up to … Continue reading “The Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcmeteors.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcmeteors.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcmeteors.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcmeteors.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcmeteors.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bcmeteors.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcmeteors.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcmeteors.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcmeteors.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}