Home > Ephemeris Program, Meteor Shower, Observing > Ephemeris: 11/10/2023 – The Northern Taurid Meteor Shower reaches its peak Sunday night

Ephemeris: 11/10/2023 – The Northern Taurid Meteor Shower reaches its peak Sunday night

November 10, 2023

This is Bob Moler with Ephemeris for Friday, November 10th. Today the Sun will be up for 9 hours and 47 minutes, setting at 5:20, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:34. The Moon, 3 days before new, will rise at 5:38 tomorrow morning.

On Sunday night the North Taurid Meteor shower will reach its peak of about 15 meteors an hour. That’s not very many. However, there are reports that they are rather slow meteors and quite bright. They’re related to Encke’s comet. That comet has the shortest period of any comet of 3.3 years. So the meteoroid debris are not falling in from very far away from the Sun to reach us, so they’re moving rather slowly. The South Taurid meteor shower reached its peak last weekend with about the same number of meteors, and from the same comet. They’re also tangled up with something called the Antihelion meteor source, which is an ill-defined source of meteors which is directly opposite the Sun. Their radiant is near the Pleiades.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EST, UT –5 hours). They may be different for your location.

The Taurid and Antihelion meteor radiants for 11 pm November 12th, give or take a few days. The Pleiades are located to the upper left of the capital N in Northern. The meteors are seen all over the sky, but can be traced back as coming from their particular radiant. Created using Stellarium.
Screen capture of a simulated Encke meteor stream through the inner solar system. Jupiter’s orbit is orange, Mars is red, Earth’s is blue. Meteor data from Peter Jenniskens, visualization developed by Ian Webster. Access via the International Meteor Organization (https://www.imo.net/)

Categories: Ephemeris Program, Meteor Shower, Observing Tags: