Did you blink? You might have missed the first meteor shower of the year, but there is another chance early Friday here in Southwest Riverside County.
The high-powered Quadrantid meteor shower peaked just before dawn Thursday with a maximum number of meteors per hour of about 80, but there's a chance to see them again before dawn between 4 and 5 a.m. Friday.
The meteor shower is expected to "last only a few hours," according to NASA.com.
The meteors are believed to be a piece comet that broke apart centuries ago. The fragments will enter the Earth's atmosphere at 90,000 mph, burning up 50 miles above Earth's surface, according to NASA.
The meteor shower is peaking while the moon is in its bright gibbous phase, according to Space.com.
Viewing tips from NASA:
- To view Quadrantids, go outside and allow your eyes 30-45 minutes to adjust to the dark.
- Look straight up, allowing your eyes to take in as much of the sky as possible.
- You will need cloudless, dark skies away from city lights to see the shower.
Like most meteor showers, Quadrantids is named for the constellation from which it appears to radiate. However, Quadrantids' constellation no longer exists. The constellation Quadrans Muralis, or Mural Quadrant, was created by the French astronomer Jerome Lalande in 1795 and was located between the constellations of Bootes the Herdsman and Draco the Dragon.
When the International Astronomical Union devised a list 88 modern constellations in 1922, it did not include Quadrans Muralis. So the meteor shower retained its name, though the constellation was rendered obsolete.
These days, Quadrantids radiates from an area inside the constellation Boötes, near the Big Dipper.
If the weather doesn't cooperate, you can watch a Ustream feed of the meteor shower on Jan. 2-4 on NASA.com.
As in the past, experts say the meteor shower may be hard to see from here, due to the light pollution. If you can get to a dark area with some elevation, you might be able to see a few meteors, says Laguna Niguel resident, Richard Bent, who spent more than 20 years working on satellites and rockets for the aerospace industry.
Check out these other interesting links:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/watchtheskies/quadrantids_2013_prt.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaZH3kiGrm4
http://www.flickr.com/groups/quadrantids/
http://www.meteorblog.com/2012/01/meteor-shower-2011-january-quadrantids/
http://www.seasky.org/astronomy/astronomy-calendar-2013.html
