ST. GEORGE —The year 2022 has been anything but typical, and the same holds true for skywatchers across Southern Utah and beyond.
So buckle up — there are amazing sights to see from now through the end of the year. Three meteor showers will make their annual appearances amid the three rocky inner planets, as well as the massive gas giant, and will light up the night sky on their journey around the sun.
The Leonids meteor shower will peak on Friday, amid the two inner planets – Mercury and Venus – that will be visible during the early morning hours. Saturn, Jupiter and Mars will shine brightly in the evening, as Earth’s five neighbors make their annual trek around the sun.
This meteor shower peaks during mid-November each year and is considered one of the major annual showers that shoots about 15 meteors an hour. While they don’t stack up to the Perseids in terms of numbers, what they lack in volume they more than make up for in brightness and color, according to NASA.
In fact, Leonids are some of the brightest and most colorful meteors.
And they are fast – really fast. These fiery snowballs zip through the sky at 44 miles per second – which is more than 158,000 miles per hour, NASA says.
At that speed, a flight to the moon, which is nearly 239,000 away, would take an hour and a half, compared with the three-day journey such a trip would take in a spacecraft launched today, for example.
In Southern Utah, peak viewing conditions for the Leonids begin Thursday at dusk and will continue until dawn on Friday. No special equipment or advanced skills are needed to view the celestial show – just dark skies and warm clothing. Temperatures are expected to hover just above freezing across the region.
This year, the moon will be in its last quarter on Wednesday, leaving a narrow window of darkness until shortly before midnight, when the fat-waning crescent moon rises.
For the best seat in the house, find an area well away from the city or street lights and then orient yourself with your feet toward the east, lying flat and then look up. Take in as much of the night sky as possible. And have patience, NASA says. It takes about 30 minutes for the eyes to adjust to the darkness, and then the meteors will be easier to see. The show is expected to last until dawn.
The Leonids occur when Earth passes through the debris left by Comet Tempel-Tuttle, which takes approximately 33 years to make one orbit around the Sun. Once every 33 years, or so, the Leonid showers become a storm, that at its peak can send hundreds to thousands of meteors shooting across the sky every hour. This was the case in 2002 when the last storm of shooting stars streaked across the sky. The next storm is expected to hit in 2035, according to NASA.
Leonids are also known as Earth-grazers – or fireballs that streak close to the horizon and create larger explosions of light and color that can persist longer than an average meteor streak. This is largely because these fireballs originate from larger particles of cometary material, which creates long colorful tails.
Next month, the mighty Geminids meteor shower will be the headliner, as it is considered to be one of the best and most reliable annual meteor showers. And this year, the shower’s peak will take place the night of Dec. 13 and early morning Dec. 14, according to the NASA website.
Geminids are bright, fast meteors and tend to be yellow in color. Geminids are also known for their fireball meteors, which are larger explosions of light and color that can persist longer than an average meteor streak.
This is because fireballs originate from larger particles of material that originate from 3200 Phaethon – an asteroid that is 1.5 miles across and is named after the character of Greek myth who drove the Sun-god Helios’ chariot, due to its close approach to the sun.
The Geminids are best viewed during the night and pre-dawn hours and are visible across the globe. This shower is considered one of the best opportunities for young viewers since this shower starts around 9 or 10 p.m.
Towards the end of December, the Quadrantids will peak on the night of Dec. 26 and the morning of Dec. 27, and under a dark sky with no moon, when the radiant is high in the sky, the Quadrantids can produce over 100 meteors per hour at their peak. This annual shower is thought to be produced by dust grains left behind by an extinct comet known as 2003 EH1, which was discovered in 2003.
Throughout November, Venus and Mercury can be seen to the left of the sun, as the inner planets have recently passed behind the sun as viewed from Earth, and Mercury will emerge into the western sky after sunset around the second week of December, NASA says.
Jupiter, the massive gas giant and the solar system’s biggest planet, will be the brightest “star” in the November evening sky as it remains nestled below the western side of the Great Square, a group of four stars in the Pegasus constellation.
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