How Often Do Shooting Stars Appear? Experts Say Meteor Showers Are Common Than Most People Thought

Shooting stars streaked the early morning darkness on April 15, 1912, as the R.M.S. Titanic sank in the cold Atlantic Ocean. Witnesses say those were the souls of their drowning loved ones, but astronomy and astrophysics Professor Kevin Luhman from Penn State said they were most likely seeing the Lyrid meteor shower that happens every mid-to-late April.

Old superstitions suggest that shooting stars are rare; that's why anyone who sees them is encouraged to make a wish because it will be granted. The implication is that sighting them is fortuitous and that person is specially selected. But scientists said that shooting stars are quite common even during the day but are more visible at night when the sky is dark.

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(Photo : ROBERT ATANASOVSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
Perseid meteorites streak over the stone dools near the village of Kuklica in the municipality of Kratovo, Northern Macedonia, an area of naturally formed stone pillars that resemble humans, on August 13, 2021.

How Common Are Shooting Stars?

Edwin Charles Krupp, an astronomer and Griffith Observatory's director, said that the name shooting star is an inaccurate nickname for a meteor. These are space rocks that appear as a flash of light streaking across the sky. Krupp told Live Science that this light is visible because of the friction when the space rock enters the atmosphere.

Most of the space rocks that enter the planet are from the asteroid belt, a place between Mars and Jupiter filled with asteroids. But how common are shooting stars and how often do they come into contact with Earth's atmosphere?

Krupp said that meteors could occur anytime, all over the Earth. However, they are mostly visible at night. He noted that most space rocks that enter the atmosphere are very small and are usually as small as a grain of sand.

Experts estimated that around 25 million shooting stars could be seen by an unaided person under a truly dark sky within a 24-hour period all over the planet. But Earth only intercepts many smaller particles that are too faint to be seen during the day, preventing an unaided eye from detecting them.

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When and Where to Best View Shooting Stars

According to Luhman, the best place to view shooting stars would be a dark spot in the northern hemisphere. He added that the pre-dawn hours of a clear night sky is the best time to watch falling meteors because the side facing into the orbit tends to encounter more space rocks falling as the Earth slowly spins around its axis, Phys.org reported.

He suggests that it is better to see shooting stars unaided than using a telescope because the equipment will only let them see a small patch of the sky. Looking at the entire night sky will give them a better chance at spotting a meteor.

Luhman added that stargazers could be treated with one or two meteors per minute when Earth passes through a debris trail left behind a comet. These meteor showers are usually named after a constellation, such as the famous and spectacular Leonid and Perseid meteor showers.

Meteor Shower Schedule 2022

EarthSky reported that the next meteor shower event will be on April 22, 2022. They will be most visible before midnight and highest in the sky at dawn. But stargazers can already start seeing the meteor shower on April 21 as there is a window of time from late evening to moonrise.

The meteor shower event next month will be followed by more shooting star events in the succeeding months. Below are the following meteor showers in the coming months according to the Royal Museum Greenwich with their maximum date of appearance: