Image Credit: NASA
Few good night sky watchers caught a peek of a brand new meteor shower on Monday night when the Earth passed through the debris route of a crumbling comet.
The meteor shower glimpsed around 1 a.m. ET, with 10 to 25 meteors an hour sighted plummeting through the night sky, according to EarthSky.com, illustrated the meteor shower as “decent.”
Recent meteor showers like this one are fairly rare. NASA had depicted the meteor shower as “an all or nothing event.”
Every year, there are over 30 meteor showers, which occur when the Earth flies through the route of debris left by a comet or asteroid that is noticeable with the bare eye.
“Some meteor showers have been around for centuries. For example, the Perseid meteor shower, which occurs each year in August, was first observed about 2,000 years ago and recorded by Chinese astronomers, “NASA explained.
Meteor showers are generally quoted after the constellation from where they occur to emit in the night sky. However, Robert Lunsford, the secretary-general of the International Meteor Organization, announced that the tau Hercules had been wrongly named.
In a blog written before Monday’s meteor shower, he announced that they would radiate from a constellation called the Bootes, at the northwest of the brilliant orange star known as Arcturus.
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