05/27/2022 – Ephemeris – There could be a spectacular meteor display Tuesday early morning, or nothing!
This is Bob Moler with Ephemeris for Friday, May 27th. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 13 minutes, setting at 9:16, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:02. The Moon, 3 days before new, will rise at 5:03 tomorrow morning.
Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, SW3 for short began to breakup in 1995, 27 years ago. Two large chunks of the comet’s nucleus and dozens of smaller pieces have been seen. A vast, unseen debris field is expected to be expanding from the remnants of the comet. Astronomers, calculating what happened to that unseen debris cloud, expect the Earth to run into a part of it around 1 am (EDT, 5 hours UT), give or take, on Tuesday, May 31st (That’s late Memorial Day night). Causing, if we’re lucky, a meteor shower or meteor storm. The radiant point from which the meteors seem to come is from between the Big Dipper’s handle and the bright star Arcturus. They will appear all over the sky. I’m crossing my fingers on this one, it could be great, or it could be nothing.
The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT – 4 hours). They may be different for your location.
Addendum
Position of the Tau Herculid radiant at 1 am, May 31, 2022. However, meteors will appear all over the sky, but could be traced back to the radiant. These meteors will appear to travel a lot slower than the Perseid meteors of August. Created using Stellarium for the star field and LibreOffice for annotations.
Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 Hubble Space Telescope images from 2006 showing the breakup of the comet. Credit: NASA.
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