The comet LINEAR is slated to produce a new meteor shower on May 24, called the May Camelopardalids.
It’s caused by dust from LINEAR, a periodic comet.
Some predictions have the shower producing more than 200 meteors per hour–which would make it one of the top storms of the year.
Dr. Bill Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environemtn Office, will be among the skygazers on Saturday morning, despite usually letting cameras do the watching for him.
“There could be a new meteor shower, and I want to see it with my own eyes,” Cooke said in an announcement.
The dust that’s projected to cause the meteor shower was actually ejected by LINEAR in the 1800s.
NASA says that there’s a broad consensus among forecasters that Earth will indeed pass through the debris streams on May 24, but no one is sure how much debris there will be.
“We have no idea what the comet was doing in the 1800s,” says Cooke. As a result of the uncertainty, “there could be a great meteor shower—or a complete dud.”
The best time for watching will be between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. EDT.
“We expect these meteors to radiate from a point in Camelopardalis, also known as ‘the giraffe’, a faint constellation near the North Star,” Cooke said. “It will be up all night long for anyone who wishes to watch throughout the night.”
