Look for! Ursid meteor shower starts tonight (December 17th)
The annual meteor shower will begin on Saturday (December 17) and continue through the Christmas period until the day after Christmas Day.
The Ursid meteor shower will peak on Thursday, December 22, but the next day when the moon is in its fully dark new moon phase, might be a good time to look for the bright streaks and fireballs from this meteor shower.
Although the Ursids at their peak can produce about 22 meteors per hour, in dark conditions with little illumination from the Moon, skywatchers can realistically expect to see between five and 10 meteors per hour.
Related: Meteor showers 2022: Where, when and how to see them
The Ursids are often overlooked as meteor showers for several reasons. First, it rains during the holiday season every year, usually between December 13th and December 24th, when people tend to have other things on their minds.
Second, this meteor shower comes after the more glamorous Geminid meteor shower, and often even overlaps the peak of this other shower that runs between December 4-20. Ursids are set to begin.
The best way to see the largest amount of meteors from any meteor shower is to look for them while your viewing position is pointed at the radiate, and when the ray is high above the horizon. The higher the radiation, the more meteors are visible.
The radiant point of the Ursids is in the constellation Ursa Minor and for viewers in New York City, that means it’s always above the horizon, or “polar circumference,” which means the Ursids should be visible during the night.
New York is heading into the direction of the Ursid meteors at around 8:00 AM EDT (1300 GMT) at this time of year when the radioactive spot is at its highest. This means that when meteorites enter Earth’s atmosphere, they rain vertically, producing trails that are close in radiation and, in principle, easy to detect.
Like all meteor showers, Ursids are created when Earth passes through a cloud of debris left behind by an asteroid or comet during its annual orbit around the Sun. This explains why meteor showers occur around the same time each year.
When these pieces of debris enter Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds they disintegrate, and the piece of debris that is larger than a pebble in size causes a bright flash or fireball.
Ursids are created from the wreckage from Comet 8P/Tuttle That sheds material as it passes close to the sun and radiation from our star converts solid ice into gas, a process called sublimation.
Tuttle has an orbit around the Sun that lasts about 13.6 years, which is a short orbital period for a comet. 8P/Tuttle is classified as a medium-sized comet, but still about 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) in diameter. This means that it is the size of Manhattan Island and larger than 99% of known asteroids.
Read more: The Christmas Asteroid Challenge starts tonight. Here’s how to join
It will be some time before 8P/Tuttle returns close to Earth. Its last approach was in January 2008, when it came within 23 million miles (37 million km) of Earth. It won’t be close to our planet again until December 28, 2048, when it will pass us at a distance of about 26 million miles (42 million kilometers).
The year 2130 will be a special year for 8P/Tuttle as the comet will pass on Christmas Day at a relatively close distance of about 14 million miles (22 million kilometers), ten times closer to Earth than the Sun.
Editor’s note: If you took a great photo, the Ursid meteor shower and would like to share it with Space.com readers, send your photo(s), comments, name, and location to spacephotos@space.com.
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