Shooting stars to dazzle in September...

This year, we have a rare chance to see the alpha Aurigids, the remnants of the ancient Comet Kiess. On 1 September, the Earth will pass through an extremely fine band of dust and other debris left behind by Kiess when it passed the sun, way back in 83BC, which will light up the skies as the pieces tear into the atmosphere. …

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so great in the UK

According to this - http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/aurigids.html - this is all going on 1130am UTC +/- 2 hours, so no luck in the UK I'm afraid.

[Tim]

A good means of predicting the weather...

... is a meteor shower. So we know when it will be raining over Britain then ;-)

[Rosco]

Did I miss something?

So is it Saturday 1st September, or is it this Sunday? Or, most likely, did I misunderstand the article?

[Stuart Barnett]

Triffids

Triffids I tells ya!

It's the start of the end ... beware

(... and pay attention to the Ides of March)

[Colin Guthrie]

I'm confused...

OK, you say September 1st which is more than three weeks away and yet you make reference sot seeing the sky getting brighter already and that "Sunday night" should be good. Do you mean this Sunday coming? i.e. 12th August or do you mean the 1st September (which is a Saturday)? Or do you really mean the 2nd September?

I would put a marker in my diary.... I just don't know when!!!

[Des]

What night?

I'm confused, the story says that we can watch the spectacle on Sunday night, but that is the 2nd of September and the date mentioned earlier in the article is 1st September. So come on, which night is it; 1st September (Saturday) or Sunday (2nd September)?

[Joel]

Where?

Knowing where the best place to be to see them on Sunday would be great, or will they be going all night everywhere in the entire world?

[Chris Miller]

Daylight meteors?

Sadly, the Aurigids peak at 11:36 GMT, so to see them at their best probably entails a trip to Hawaii ...

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/08aug_aurigids.htm?list134468

[David Knapman]

3 out of 8

People who've commented seem unable to follow a simple story which a) States that there'll be a rare shower on the 1st September, and b) States that an annual shower will be worth watching on Sunday.

How difficult is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG!

Why bother clicking on a story if your not going to actually read it properly!

[A. Merkin]

Re: 3 of 8

Obviously, your average Reg reader is not used to having that many showers in a month...

[Chris Goodchild]

Perseids

On the night of the twelfth get a six pack and stay up till the wee hours before dawn and look toward the east .

[Jon Tocker]

re not so great in the UK

"According to this - http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/aurigids.html - this is all going on 1130am UTC +/- 2 hours, so no luck in the UK I'm afraid."

Which means: Unless it's pissing down with rain or otherwise clouded/fogged over, viewing's going to be good in NZ.

"We expect the outburst to peak at 11:36 UT (4:36 a.m. PDT) +/- 20 minutes on Sept. 1st," says Jenniskens. "The whole event should last about 2 hours and be visible from California, Oregon, Hawaii and the eastern Pacific Ocean."

So that's about 11:36pm (+/1 20 mins) on Aug 31 - and Oh, gee, at that time I'll be up on a mountain-side well away from a lot of light pollution and with less atmosphere in the way of the view.

Here's hoping the weather is as clear on this year's "Cold Kiwi" rally as it was last year!

[Jason Collins]

Read it.

Ok folks, it's not that hard... letters grouped equal words. Words grouped equal sentences. Those sentences form paragraphs, and every paragraph is related to the whole story. So now read every paragraph, and think about what you're reading. It article VERY clearly talks about TWO meteor showers. One has been going on for a few weeks already (the Perseid shower), and will be spectacular this Sunday. The other meteor shower the article mentions is the Aurigids, and THAT meteor shower is on Sept. 1st.

So, once again, and simply put... There are TWO meteor showers. One in progress with a spike in activity this Sunday. And one that will last only about one night, and is much more rare on Sept. 1st.

Any questions?

[David Shaw]

Radio Meteors in Daylight

you CAN follow the meteor showers by their radio/radar reflection - even in daylight - and should you be unwilling to foot the electricity bill for an 800Kilowatt VHF transmitter it seems NORAD have done it for us

http://icecast.nis.nasa.gov:8000/navspasur

this address (or some derivative of such) will end up at a 'live' streaming audio of doppler etc. reflections near space objects, or Tupolev Tu95's

[Chris Goodchild]

tt

tyt

[natasha]

what r they??

i have been wondering for a while now what these moving lights (stars maybe) are? my boyfriend and i have noticed for a while, they look too far up away from the clouds to be aeroplanes, and there are no flashing lights. They seem to move pretty slowly and there are a few scattered about each night, looking at the meteor shower (sunday) we noticed quite a few again, and have no idea what they could be? can any one help please??

[Michael Martin]

re: what r they??

First, dear Natasha, please learn to type properly. Double question marks are not necessary, and the first sentence in your comment does not require a question mark, but instead demands a period. Please capitalize the first letter of every sentence. I know the shift key is hard to hold down while pressing another key, but if you make the effort, your grammatical skills will at least appear to be much greater than they currently are.

Also, the moving lights are satellites.

[Tawakalna]

but is that really what they are?

don't believe them, Natasha! Those are really Lizard orbital vehicles from the Mother Ship near Saturn, where the wormhole to Zeta Reticuli is located. Humans of course do not *really* go into space, that's a very dangerous thing to do re: crystalline spheres, turtles etc.

Meteor showers are actually Lizard vessels sowing our atmosphere with a mix of infectious diseases, toxic substances, and mind-altering drugs so as to kill off the human population, convert the atmosphere to a suitable methane/carbon-dioxide mix similar to Zeta Reticuli, the Lizard homeworld, and to wipe the minds of any indigineous human who stumbles across their evil plan to dominate the Earth, or at least make them look like fools and liars to other humans.

..what was I saying?