Tau Herculids meteor shower is set to happen next week and NASA predicts that it could be an all-or-nothing event. The American space agency has been tracking a broken-up comet that might become visible in a few days and make a beautiful meteor shower event if conditions allow it.
NASA astronomer Bill Cooke, who leads the space agency's meteoroid environment office, said they have been tracking the debris from the shattering comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, also called SW 3 predicts it will either cause the Tau Herculids meteor shower or not.
Comet SW 3 Broken Into Pieces
Comet SW 3 was discovered on May 2, 1930, by Friedrich Carl Arnold Schwassmann and Arno Arthur Wachmann in Hamburg Observatory, Bergedorf, Germany. It was the 73rd comet recognized as periodic, a short-period comet that completes one rotation around the Sun in less than 200 years.
NASA scientists have been observing it since its discovery. However, there are times when they lose sight of it due to poor observing conditions and rediscover the comet after several years.
According to NASA's Center for Near Object Studies, comet SW 3 started to break up into various fragments in late 1995 in which the main comment labeled before as fragment C was seen to give rise to two new fragments, A and B. Then in 2001, fragments C, B, and new fragment E were observed together.
But it was not until 2006 that fragment C began to fragment into 30 additional pieces that were observed to pass relatively close to Earth in May that year. That event helped astronomers study the cometary breakup process and understand why some comets disrupt.
Since then, ground-based visual observations and the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Infrared space telescope have been observing the comet.
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Why Tau Herculids 2020 Meteor Shower Is Unconfirmed?
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center head Bill Cooke said in a statement that if the debris from SW 3 is traveling more than 220 miles (354 kilometers) per hour, then it would create a nice Tau Herculid meteor shower.
On the other hand, there is also a possibility that there will be no meteor shower all. Cooke added that nothing will be visible from Earth if the debris will travel at slower ejection speeds from the comet.
Orbital data of the comet show that it comes as close to Earth as 5.7 million miles (9.2 million kilometers) and orbits the Sun approximately every 5.4 years. It has been observed for decades and now its debris might also cause a beautiful meteor shower on May 30 or 31 next week, Space.com reported.
How to Observe the Meteor Shower
The meteor shower will be visible in North and Central America, in which the most optimal viewing spots will range from Southern California and Mexico to Texas, according to The New York Times.
For optimal viewing conditions, the news outlet also reported that the night of May 30, when it is a new moon, will be the best since the meteor shower will not be competing with the moonlight for visibility.
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