- John Bochanski wrote an article tilted
- The Next New Meteor Shower,
Astronomers confirm that debris from Comet 209P/LINEAR should create a sky show on May 24, 2014
"Most meteor showers ... occur when Earth plows into the debris trail left behind by a comet. The comet throws this debris off as it’s heated by the Sun, but while all comets heat up as they enter the inner solar system, many do not have orbits that intersect with Earth’s.
... The tried-and-true list of showers might change soon, though.
As we noted in 2012, the comet 209P/LINEAR, which passed by the Sun in 2009, may produce a big meteor shower on May 24, 2014.
... Detailed calculations of its orbit indicated that in May 2014 the comet’s debris trails would pass extremely close to Earth
- (about 0.0002 Earth-Sun distances, or within spitting distance of our planet’s outermost atmosphere).
... Ye and Wiegert report in an upcoming Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the team’s calculations suggest that the comet has been producing relatively large particles (on the order of 1 mm), meaning that the upcoming meteor shower may be chock-full of bright meteors.
... With the low dust production, as well as the team’s lower estimate of how many debris streams from the comet's previous passes are hanging around in this region of space,
it’s highly unlikely that we’re in for a “meteor storm” (1,000 per hour) —
- although the team couldn’t quite rule it out.
... It’ll be worth going out to look in May.
The meteor shower is set to peak around 7h Universal Time on May 24, 2014, with the radiant point (where the meteors appear to come from) in the constellation Camelopardalis.
That’ll be a fist-width or two above the horizon for those around latitude 40° N;
- the shower should be easily visible from much of the Northern Hemisphere.
As Comet 209P/LINEAR enters the inner solar system again, it will brighten but still be relatively faint with an apparent magnitude of 11 around the time of the shower.
Nonetheless, skywatchers will have their telescopes trained on this comet, as new data on its position and brightness will be crucial for updating models of its behavior. ... "
- Kelly Beatty wrote an article titled Meteor Storm Brewing for 2014 ? on October 9, 2012 and he stated:
" ... It follows a looping but relatively tight path that carries it just inside Earth's orbit every 5.04 years.
According to dynamicist Syuichi Nakano, Comet 209P/LINEAR's next perihelion occurs on May 6, 2014, at a point 0.969 astronomical unit from the Sun and with Earth not far away.
Just 18 days later, we should cross through dozens of particle streams shed during past orbits.
The predictions are still rough, but three different models suggest the sky show could be spectacular.
"As a consequence, this shower might as well be a storm,"
... The best part of all this prognostication, at least from a U.S. perspective, is that the meteor display should peak between 7:00 and 8:00 Universal Time on May 24th — it'll be dark across virtually all of North America.
... And the Moon will be a narrow waning sliver just a few days from new. "
Mikhail Maslov wrote
" ...The Earth is expected to encounter a great number of the comet 209P trails in 2014.
The main source of activity should become 1898-1919 trails,
- however some meteors could be produced by the earlier trails of the comet, down to 1763 trail, which is the oldest computed trail, and even earlier.
- theoretical radiant is RA=122.8�, Dec=+79.0�.
as well as due to very small size of the comet itself and unknown level of its past activity.
However, considering high computed density and high number of encountered trails, we can very approximately estimate ZHRex as 100 meteors.
Its a very cautious estimation, and it is very possible that real activity will turn to be much higher.
Storm levels are also far from being excluded.
Also take a look at the 3D view of the 1903 meteoroid trail in the Solar system of comet 209P/LINEAR (2004 CB) :
And the Equivalent 2D view (XY).
So my first question is:
What does this Noeds-Earth2014.jpg , or the 3D model above, actually tell us?
I assume this is a 3-dimensional chart, and we can't tell the 2 dimensional danger it represents to us.
Are there any Radar Images of Comet 209P/Linear or Hubble photos of it showing its core?
