This weekend of Remembrance Day, Earthlings – especially those in North America – can enjoy the sight of a new meteor shower.
These meteors it can explode when our planet passes through pieces of a decaying comet called Schwassmann-Wahman 3 (SW3). It’s not easy an exciting opportunity for sky watchers; comet scientists are also looking forward to the meeting. According to NASA, the meteor shower could surprise (or disappoint) on the night of Remembrance Day (Monday, May 30) and collide with the beginning of Tuesday.
SW3 is quite close to the sun comet standards; it orbits our star once every five years. In 1995, it began to disintegrate, disintegrating into dozens of smaller pieces, leaving behind a cloud of debris that continues to orbit the sun.
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We’ve seen comets split before. One in every 100 periodic comets – and perhaps more – could eventually disintegrate, according to William Rich, an astronomer at the SOFIA Science Center at NASA’s California Research Center.
It is known that in 1990 Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 it disintegrated and large pieces of it hit Jupiter. But even if the continued disintegration of SW3 looks somewhat similar, the process is “almost certainly not the same,” Rich told Space.com.
Scientists are not entirely sure what causes comet decay. It can be one or a combination of several factors. Shoemaker-Levy 9 disintegrated under the pressure of Jupiter’s powerful gravitational pull, for example. But some other comets can disintegrate when volatile compounds in them, such as water, heat up and go from solid to gas.
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In addition, the comet’s constant rocking from the inner solar system to the far colder outer limits and back loads the body with heat. Given enough repetitive stress, something can give.
In any case, SW3 is falling apart. And over the past few decades, Earth’s orbit has brought our planet closer and closer to crossing the resulting cloud of debris. This year finally seems to be the year we travel through it. If this is indeed the case, much of the comet’s debris will fall Earth’s atmosphere and burn like meteors, some of which can be spectacular.
Astronomers certainly hope this will happen; they want to get a rare close-up view of pieces of a celestial object. Actually an astronomer, Jeremy Vobayonplans to get even closer by flying over New Mexico and Arizona during the meteor shower.
“Flying through it, even just knowing it exists, shows that the particles have survived,” Rich told Space.com. “We don’t really know that. Some of them are icy and don’t survive.”
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As the pieces of comets enter the Earth’s atmosphere, scientists can observe how they fragment, which may reveal information about their composition. And some of these pieces may come from deep into the comet, a realm that astronomers can’t access just by looking at an object with a telescope.
In addition, potential meteor showers offer a rare opportunity for astronomers to find cometary material. In the past, after all, NASA has flown with particle traps through meteor showers to catch the falling dust left over from the early days of the solar system.
“It’s basically like having a space mission, going to the comet and bringing it back, except the comet just shot them here,” Rich said.
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