by Earth may experience a new meteor shower this December when our planet enters a stream of debris left around the sun by a near-Earth comet. These meteors appear to stream from the direction of the star Lambda-Sculptoris, which means that a possible name for this meteor shower is the “Lambda-Sculptorids.”
The potential new meteor shower is Comet 46P/Wirtanen, which was discovered in 1948 and orbits the sun every 5.4 years, much faster than other comets, such as Halley’s Comet – which takes about 75 years to orbit our star.
A team of scientists led by Observatoire de Paris astronomer Jeremie Vaubaillon wanted to answer the question of why Earth had not had a meteor shower created by debris from Comet 46P/Wirtanen before. What they discovered is that such an event is scheduled to occur on Tuesday, December 12, 2023.
“The results show a possible contact forecast for December 12, 2023, between 8:00 and 12:30 UT [0300 and 0730 EST]. The shower’s activity level is highly uncertain due to the lack of showers reported in the past,” they write in a paper discussing their findings published on the open source repository arXiv and set for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Overall, the best views on the forecast day will be from Eastern Australia, New Zealand and Oceania.”
Related: Meteor Showers 2023: When will the next one be?
TOP TOP PICK:
Need a telescope? We recommend the Celestron Astro Fi 102 as the top choice in our best beginners telescope guide.
Meteor showers are formed when the Earth passes through clouds of debris left behind by comets as they move close to the sun. As radiation from our star passes them away, solid material within the comet turns directly into gas through a process called sublimation. As this gas erupts from the icy outer shell and escapes the comet, it blows free of debris that forms the distinctive tails and auras – or “comas” – of these cosmic icy bodies.
This debris can settle into circumsolar streams that Earth passes through at about the same time each year during our 365.3-day trip around our star. When that happens, fragments of debris enter Earth’s atmosphere at speeds as high as 162,000 miles per hour (260,713 kph) – or about 100 times faster than the top speed of a Lockheed Martin F-16 jet fighter. As they do, these fragments burn high above the Earth, creating steaks of light and large, finger-sized fragments exploding like bright fireballs. This speed depends on several variables, including the angle at which fragments enter the Earth’s atmosphere.
Meteor showers are named after objects in the sky from which the most intense bombardment appears to come. Thus, the Perseid meteor shower originates from debris left by comet Swift-Tuttle that appears to stream to Earth from the constellation Perseus.
Comet 46P/Wirtanen is about 1 mile wide and is part of the Jupiter family of comets, which have an orbit determined by the gas giant’s gravity and tend to orbit the sun for a period of less than 20 years. It last made a close approach to Earth on December 16, 2018, coming within about 7.22 million miles of our planet, at which time scientists discovered that it was a so-called “hyperactive comet,” meaning that it releases more water than would be expected from an icy body of the same size. However, no meteor showers have yet been associated with Comet 46P/Wirtanen.
To find out why this might be, the team used different models to calculate the release of material from Comet 46P/Wirtanen, then calculated how these particles would behave after emission and, therefore, the type of debris flow this would create. The team concluded that a meteoroid stream associated with this comet should have touched Earth several times in the past, but that a low entry speed may have sent debris into our planet’s atmosphere. preventing the manifestation of meteor showers.
RELATED STORIES:
— ‘Devil Comet’ 12P/Pons-Brooks is approaching Earth. Why is it lighting up, ‘horns’ and all?
— Halley’s Comet begins its 38-year journey back toward Earth tonight
— Mighty morphin’ Centaur rings — the rings of a distant icy object are morphing
“There have been several contacts in the past with Earth and the stream, but no observations have been reported to our knowledge. This is probably due to the fairly unusual ejection velocity required to bring large particles to the World,” wrote the team.
They discovered that the Earth is going to be in contact with this stream in the near future, which could be the result of the first recorded Lambda-Sculptorids meteor shower.
“The observation and subsequent description of this shower was of great scientific interest because it would place constraints on the size-frequency distribution of large particles for the comet,” the team concluded. “However, observations will be challenging due to the low entry velocity and relatively small sizes of the meteoroids. However, we strongly encourage meteor enthusiasts to make scientific observations and send their reports to the International Meteor Organization (IMO) .”
Another meteor shower, known as the Geminids, peaks around the same time on the nights of December 13 and 14.
If you want to try your hand at photographing the Geminids or any other meteor shower, be sure to check out our guide on how to photograph meteors and meteor showers. And if you need imaging gear, consider our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography.
