Viewing satisfaction is inversely proportional to media hyped expectations. Hoping this pans out, but not holding my breath.
I’ve seen (barely, or almost) too many fizzled “possible” comets of the century/lifetime to get excited about a hypothetical new meteor shower of “possible” storm proportions.
I’ve also seen some fantastic displays, especially of Leonids, and Perseids; and 3 or 4 truely stunning comets; and a couple of daytime/twilight fireballs: it isn’t the sky that disappoints, but the failure to come anywhere near what the hype leads one to expect to see.
Going out and laying in a field in the summer, and seeing a dozen nice meteors in a 90 or so minute period is awesome...unless all the sites and articles kept insisting there “should be” 40-60 per hour.
Oh, wait! There WERE 40-60 per hour, but the hypers failed to mention that most wouldn’t be visible to the naked eye; but if you listened in on the meteor radar broadcast, you could definitely hear their ‘piiiiings!’ Watching a meteor shower on the radio is really pretty disappointing to the average viewer.
About a trillion radio meteors enter the atmosphere daily. A bane for HF OTH radar, btw.
I don’t know if they mentioned it, but this shower will peak about 07:00 UTC, or about 03:00 ET. It will be best seen in the northeastern US and Southern Canada.
The radiant is about 10 degrees (a fists width) away from Polaris (the north star). If you think of the radiant as the hour hand of a clock moving around Polaris, it moves from about the 8:30 to the 6:30 position between 02:00 and 04:00 ET.
Wishing all clear skies and good views.
The best meteor show I’ve seen was the Perseids, from high in the Wind River Mountains back in 1998. I saw one tremendous flaming fireball at dusk. Spectacular.
How does one listen to meteors?