Just as the Christmas luminousness are coming down and the NYE firework have fizzled away , the first meteor cascade of 2018 is about to light up the Nox sky .
The Quadrantid meteor shower will reach its prime this workweek on Wednesday , January 3 at 4 pm EST ( 9 pm GMT ) , although it will retain to bubble away until January 17 , according toNASA ’s Hubble Space Telescope mission squad .
The meteoroid shine from the northern sky from the configuration Boötes , not far from the Big Dipper , but you will be to see them in all parts of the sky if you are in the Northern Hemisphere . If you ’re reckon from the Southern Hemisphere you probably wo n’t have much luck find many meteoroid .
Viewing may be tricky . The Quadrantids are not as shining and vibrant as other meteor rain shower . On top of this , the night sky ’s wane gibbous Moon is likely to submerge out the residuum of the cascade .
Nevertheless , you could potentially spot over 10 meteors per hour if you are lucky , fit in to theAmerican Meteor Society . For best results , get far away from hokey lights , hope for absolved skies , and brain outside 30 second beforehand to allow your centre to adjust to the low - lightness levels . Put on a wooly chapeau and get the kettle on too – it ’s cold out .
The dazzle streaks of light that you will see are specks of debris from the rocky object 2003 EH1 . As pieces of the asteroid hit Earth ’s upper ambience , they fire up and exude a beautiful blueish tail end of light .
" Unlike most meteor showers which originate from comet , the Quadrantids originate from an asteroid : asteroid 2003 EH1 , " according toNASA . " Asteroid 2003 EH1 takes 5.52 years to orbit the sun once . It is possible that 2003 EH is a " dead comet " or a raw kind of object being discourse by astronomers called a rock comet . "
This meteoroid rain shower gets its name from the Quadrans Muralis , a former configuration that is no longer recognized by the International Astronomical Union . In the 1920s , they rewrote the official definition and get rid of 30 of them , one of which was the Quadrans Muralis .
January is set to be a great month for stargazers . We ’ve already had the raresupermoon " Wolf Moon"and you should overtake a coup d’oeil of atotal lunar occultation on January 31(which will coincidentally also be a dispirited Moon too because it ’s the second full Moon in the calendar month ) .
