January meteor shower could put on a fiery show

Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2003 | 10:11 a.m.

Southern Nevada sky watchers are gearing up for a spectacle from space in early January that could light up predawn skies.

The Quadrantids, a meteor shower that ranks among the top three sky spectacles each year, could produce hundreds of flashes in the skies every hour over Southern Nevada on Jan. 3 and 4 before sunrise.

That is, if the weather cooperates and the skies stay clear, astronomers said.

Along with the Perseids in August and the Geminids in December, the Quadrantid meteors streak across the sky as a result of a celestial explosion more than 500 years ago, Dale Etheridge, astronomer at the Community College of Southern Nevada Planetarium, said.

The meteors will compete with the moon as it becomes full, but for a couple of hours before dawn, the Quadrantids may produce fiery trails.

"It has occasionally been spectacular," Etheridge said.

The average number of fragments burning up as they enter the Earth's atmosphere is 60 an hour, said Daisy Polidoro at the planetarium.

"The moon is full on Jan. 7, so it is going to be high in the sky by 10 p.m.," Polidoro said.

That's one of the reasons that the early morning hours are expected to be best for stargazers.

The rate of fiery bursts in the sky should increase between 2 a.m. and right before dawn, Etheridge said.

"It's distinctly possible this year it could be spectacular," Etheridge said.

It all depends on where thin streams of material will strike the atmosphere, he said.

For most of North America, the Quadrantids have not been observed as intensely as other meteor showers because observers face winter weather's stormy skies and freezing temperatures.

"You have to be in the right place at the right time," Etheridge said.

Those who venture into the early morning darkness and cold, however, don't need telescopes or binoculars to see the shooting stars. Just look toward the northeast.

For those who are interested in peering into space at other stars and planets, the Las Vegas Astronomical Society has an event planned for later in January for the general public, society president Geary Keilman said.

Keilman said the society decided not to conduct a special event for the Quadrantids because "they will occur with nearly a full moon, which will drastically curtail the number and brightness of those that are seen."

The Las Vegas Astronomical Society will host its second annual New Astronomer's Star Party and Telescope Clinic beginning at 5 p.m. on Jan. 10 at Red Rock Canyon Visitors Center, Keilman said.

The event is free to the public, except for a $5 parking fee for entering the visitor center.

Sky watchers who don't want to wait for that can try to catch glimpses of the Quadrantids, however.

The meteors originate in the constellation Bootes, the Herder, in the position of where 4 o'clock would be when looking at the Big Dipper. Bootes is located in the northeastern section of the sky for observers in North America.

The original comet producing the Quadrantid meteors exploded long ago. It's the dust from that explosion that earthlings see during meteor showers, Etheridge said.

The ghostly image of the old comet is a faint, minuscule star-like object detected last March by an automatic asteroid detector at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz.

The Quadrantids are named after a constellation known as Quadrans Murales that disappeared in 1922. That year the International Astronomical Union adopted an official list of 88 "recognized" constellations. The stars from the Quadrantids were part of the obscure northern sky constellations.

Edward C. Herrick of Yale University recorded in the American Journal of Science that he had received a report of unusually large numbers of shooting stars early on the morning of Jan. 2, 1862, one of the earliest recordings of the meteor shower.

A woman in Connecticut contacted Herrick about an "unusual" number of shooting stars that morning.

By January 1864 the "shooting stars of January" were observed by five astronomical groups in England, supporting the earlier New England observations.