Meteor shower september 1 2007

Meteor shower september 1 2007
It may not last very long, but could produce a bevy of bright, swift shooting stars for favorably positioned skywatchers. The prediction is found in a technical report, co-authored by two astronomers who are targeting Sept. 1, 2007 as the date for the potential display.
The meteors are called "Aurigids" because they appear to fan-out from the constellation of Auriga, the Charioteer.
At least a strong shower
Meteor showers occur whenever we ride into the dusty debris left behind in a comet's orbit. The debris left behind by Kiess, a comet last seen in 1911, is what produces the Aurigids. The comet takes approximately 2,500 years to orbit the Sun, but there are also dense trails of dust traveling along its orbit. Earth has had glancing blows in the past with a few of these dust trails in 1935, 1986 and 1994.
In 2007, however, the Earth is expected to pass very close to the center of a dust trail, which astronomers Esko Lyytinen of Finland and Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute in California said, should result in "a spectacularly rich shower of bright meteors."
The researchers in the past used computer models to predict outbursts of the Leonid meteor shower, which wowed skywatchers in 2001 and 2002.
Shooting stars, or meteors, are common any night of the year; five or six per hour are normal. During a respectable meteor shower, they can be seen streaking across the sky every few minutes. But occasionally the sky explodes in a shower of sparks, a rare meteor "storm" that is something to get excited about.
Meteor shower september 1 2007