At night, we can observe the meteor shower from Halley’s comet, weather permitting

The Eta Aquarida swarm is caused by ice dust grains from the periodic comet 1P/Halley. The viewing conditions around the maximum of the shower are almost ideal on the night of Sunday 5th to Monday 6th May: the moon will be in phase just two days before new moon, so it will not be practically visible, and it makes sense to watch the meteors from three o’clock in the morning until dawn.

“The Eta Aquarida meteor shower, the maximum of which falls on May 5, has very good observation conditions this year. The moon before the new moon will not disturb the observation with its light. During the peak period, up to 50 meteors can appear per hour,” astronomer and press secretary of the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Pavel Suchan summarized for Novinky.

The maximum of the swarm thus occurs late on Sunday evening around 11 p.m. CEST, but it is not too sharp. We will have the opportunity to see the most meteors during the night, or in the early hours of the morning.

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According to astronomers, to improve observation conditions, it is desirable to avoid places with light pollution.

The weather should also be favorable for observing the phenomenon, at least in most of the Czech Republic.

“From three o’clock in the morning, there will be good conditions for observation in most areas: it will be partly clear to almost clear. The exception will be the Ústí and Karlovy Vary regions, where the cloudiness will increase – it will be cloudy there, gradually even cloudy,” meteorologist Dagmar Honsová told Novinka, adding that fogs may occasionally form in the morning, especially in valleys and depressions.

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The meteors of the respective swarm fly out of the constellation Aquarius. It is called Aquarius in Latin and is located near the star marked with the Greek letter eta, from which the swarm takes its name. It is active this year from April 19 to May 28, and is at its peak around May 5 and 6.

The zenith frequency is therefore up to 50 meteors per hour, which expresses how many meteors can appear in the sky if the place from which the shooting stars appear to fly out – the so-called radiant – is directly above the observer’s head.

Since the radiant Eta Aquarid is not in our sky until the morning before dawn, low above the eastern horizon, it is necessary to subtract about half of the meteors that can be seen. In addition, a person will not be able to see the entire sky and it will also be dawn, due to which weak meteors will disappear.

Still, according to Suchan, many meteors will remain to be seen.

“If you stay until the early hours of the morning, on Monday after 3:30 CEST, low in the east, you will also be able to see the rising planets, specifically Saturn and later Mars, which together with the Moon, rising at dawn in the narrow crescent phase, will form a very photogenic ‘line ‘,” added astrophotographer and astronomy popularizer Petr Horálek from the Institute of Physics of the University of Silesia in Opava.

• The source of the dust stream that causes the May Eta Aquarids is, as already indicated, famous Halley’s comet. The path of the comet, along which it leaves dust, which then causes a light show, crosses the Earth twice – in October, the Orionids appear in the sky. Halley’s Comet orbits the Sun once every 76 years.

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