Quadrantids Meteor Shower - January 3-4, 2011

2011 starts with an impressive meteor shower for those ready to brave a cold night. The Quadrantids take place the night of Monday January 3rd into the morning of Tuesday January 4th, and are made better by the fact that the Moon is new, meaning no interference from moonlight.

As always, the best viewing of any meteor shower is from a dark location, ideally away from city lights. But I have had some success right in my backyard in San Francisco by positioning myself away from direct lights such as streetlights and houselights, and allowing myself 5 to 10 minutes to adapt to the darkness. Once dark adapted, the winter sky shimmers and Quadrantids are readily visible. In dark skies outside of cities you can expect up to 2 meteors per minute, but in the City I am happy to see 1 meteor every few minutes. This year should be as good a show as any, and despite our rainy Northern California weather the outlook is good.

To see this shower, position yourself facing northeast but give yourself as much of a view of the sky as possible. A lawn chair is best (along with blankets and a hat), as the meteors appear to originate in the constellation Bootes in the northeast part of the sky, but the meteors radiate in every direction away from this point.

For some fun background and history of this meteor shower, check out Astronomy.com and NASA's "What's Up" blog series. Image is courtesy of NASA.

Stay warm, and here's to good skies!

Resolution for 2009: See more meteor showers

I awoke this morning shortly after 5:00 and dressed warmly to see the first meteor shower of 2009, the Quadrantids. I had just been reading about this shower the night before and it sounded like it would have an impressive peak at 5:00 pacific time. The conditions looked good from inside my house, so I ventured to my backyard and looked high into the north-east. It took only a minute or two before I was rewarded for my efforts: a pinpoint of light streaked across the sky for an instant. I was energized and focused and saw a particularly bright one a minute later. In my brief 15 minute session, I saw about 8 meteors. By then the first light of dawn was beginning to color the eastern sky and I was ready to hop back into bed!

Meteors are a delight from my point of view for a variety of reasons. They are high-speed astronomical events, those rare things you can encounter in the sky that are fast and require you to pay attention, like a total solar eclipse. Meteors are quick and yet they leave the impression of a long trail in your eye (sometimes the long streak is real, but often it is just a visual memory). My favorite thing is that they are silent. I always expect them to make a sound like an exploding firework, but despite the fact that we are witnessing mass vaporizing in an explosion of heat and brightness, nearly all meteors make no sound. The occasional fireball that is of massive proportion (such as a recent fireball over Canada) are the extremely rare spectacles that might create some local sound.

Meteor showers are annual events that are specifically tied to a time of year and a location in the sky from which the meteors all appear to radiate. For 2009, I am going to make a point of seeing more of these. Typically meteor showers peak after midnight and are best seen when there is no interference from the moon. So for the 10-12 major showers that occur in a year, the phase of the moon will make some of them easier to see than others. Of course, weather plays a role like it does for any other astronomical viewing - the clearer the atmosphere, the better the viewing. And of course the darker the sky, the more meteors you will see. Last night was a chance alignment of nearly all these factors: no clouds, clear atmosphere and no moon. So I jumped at the opportunity to enjoy the sight of the Quadrantid meteors. Even in the city lights of San Francisco the conditions were favorable enough to see some.

The informative astronomy website EarthSky has an excellent summary of the major meteor showers in 2009. Mark your calendar and plan to see a few - they are truly beautiful to witness.