If the stars line up, Ontario residents may be able to see a spectacular sky show Tuesday morning, an event astronomers call a “meteor storm.”
CTV News science and technology specialist Dan Riskin said astronomers predicted that around 1 a.m. Tuesday, people could witness either this rare event or possibly see nothing significant.
Astronomers say they predict the Earth will pass through debris Monday night left by a broken comet that crashed in 1995.
The broken comet called Comet 73P / Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 [SW3]was first discovered in 1930. The comet was weak for most of its years until it broke in 1995, when it became 600 times brighter.
“If the pieces are the right size and if the pieces are moving at the right speed, which we don’t really know, but it’s possible, we could get something beyond a meteor shower,” Riskin said Monday afternoon.
“We can get what is called a meteor storm with thousands of meteors per hour, and the peak will reach about 1 am in Toronto.
By comparison, scientists say that regular meteor showers average one meteor every minute, approximately 60 per hour. However, the significance of the event depends largely on the speed and direction of the fragments.
“If you want to get up in the middle of the night, go out around 1 in the morning, try to get somewhere without light pollution and look at the sky,” Riskin said.
“It’s going to be a great show or it’s going to be absolutely nothing and nobody knows.”
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