Astronomy fans could experience a shower of extra stars at the end of May: the Tau Herculids. The Earth will go through three ships of debris created by comet SW3 in 1995, 1892 and 1897, however, NASA does not confirm that this phenomenon occurs 100%.
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Named 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann or SW3, this comet was discovered in 1930 by the Germans Arnold Schwassmann and Arno Arthur Wachmann. These observers found that the celestial body completed one revolution around the sun every 5.4 years.
The Tau Herculids come from a broken comet
The comet was not seen again until 1979 because its trail was so faint. And in 1995 it became 600 times brighter, going from a faint smudge to being visible to the naked eye as it approached our planet.
However, NASA scientists checked in 2006, when it approached Earth at a distance of 11.9 million kilometers. that the comet had broken into several pieces.
What has to be fulfilled for there to be a shower of stars?
As we say, it is not certain that this meteor shower will occur. What does it depend on? From the speed of the debris. “It’s going to be an all-or-nothing event.” This is explained by Bill Cooke, director of the NASA Meteoroid Environmental Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama (USA).
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“If the debris from SW3 is traveling at more than 200 miles per hour when it broke away from the comet, we could see a nice meteor shower. If the debris has slower ejection speeds, then nothing will reach Earth and there will be no meteors from this comet,” he explains.
When could the Tau Herculids be seen?
In the event that these conditions are met, the Tau Herculids meteor shower will reach its peak on the night of May 30 to the morning of May 31. There will be a new moon, so no light will outshine the shooting stars. To see them, we must look up high in the sky, which is where their apparent point of origin is.
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