When comets travel close to the Sun, they lay down debris streams of dust shed during their inner solar system passage. If a planet happens to be in the way a meteor shower occurs, witnessed as silent flitting streaks through the sky. The Perseid and Geminid meteors are two great annual showers, originating from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle and ‘rock-comet’ 3200 Phaethon, respectively.
On most years, the Tau Herculids aren’t much to look at. In 2022 however, things could get interesting as Earth is due to cross a couple key streams laid down by Comet 73P. Specifically, astronomer Jérémie Vaubaillon working at the Institute for Celestial Mechanics and Computation of Ephemerides in Paris shows an encounter with streams from 1892 and 1897 laid down pre-discovery. Now, just how dense these streams are is anyone’s guess.
Earth on the morning of May 31st at ~5:00 UT/1:00 AM EDT, versus the incoming Tau Herculid meteor stream. Credit: Dave DickinsonThe key date and time to watch for a possible 2022 Herculid outburst is on the morning of Tuesday, May 31at around 5:00 Universal Time or 1:00 AM Eastern Time EDT. This places the radiant high in the sky for Northern Hemisphere observers in the pre-dawn hours, another plus.
The Tau Herculid radiant on the morning of May 31st, as seen from the U.S. East Coast. Credit: Stellarium. The Tau Herculids are a ‘slow shower’ with an inbound velocity of 16 km/second—slow that is, compared to, say the November Leonids, with a swift 72 km/second incoming velocity. Expect any Tau Herculids you see to be slow and stately emanating from a radiant near the globular cluster Messier 3, about a third the way between the bright star Arcturus and the end of the handle of the Big Dipper asterism.
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