Hello Michael again! Is a meteor storm coming on November 21st 2019 well let's
find out let's go over the information I've dug into why some people think the
seemingly out of nowhere meteor storm or intense outburst is going to happen in
some history of the Alpha Monocerotid meteor shower
stick with me the end, I wanna make it absolutely sure you understand what
we're getting into so you don't spend an hour freezing later this month for no
reason! First I'm not a fan at all about the media articles I've seen put out
about meteor showers and here's why. There's really only two important
displays to be aware of the Geminids and the Perseids. The Perseids in August and
the Geminids in December. These are displays that easily produce rates
around one meteor every forty seconds at their peak or about a hundred an hour
and that's on top of the normal background rate during the summer of
about 20 meteors per hour and then I only really care if there's a new moon
during the meteor shower speak most meteors are just washed out by the glare
of moonlight there's lots of meteor showers there's pretty much one going on
all the time there's the Taurids, Leonids The Eta Aquarids, the Orionids.
See most often these don't produce much more meteors than what you can see
during any late evening any time of the year. And especially in northern summer
if you really want to see meteors that bad
find a dark sky stay up until after midnight and stare up at the sky for 15
minutes you'll probably see 3 or 4 meteors pretty much any night of the
year now there are some exceptions though not recently and media attention
least minor displays sometimes get just baffles me there's a background rate of
about 20 per hour that's already in place and then the meteor shower like
the Leonids outside of a few special years are adding 15 meteors per hour. The
taurids will add a whopping 5 meteors per hour at their peak. Think about it
this way you'll see five random meteors for every taurid that you see. Now the
Taurids are pretty cool for another reason but I'm not going to get off into
that tangent right now. So when I see a few websites hyping up an incredible
display perhaps even hinting at a possible meteor storm. oh boy. I'm gonna
have to do some digging on this one. Alright so what does a meteor storm a
meteor storm is considered your shower that exceeds a rate of 1000
meteors per hour. (ZHR) Zenith Hourly Rate really means if the
source of meteors is directly overhead from where you're standing and looking
up this is how many meteors you might see in a given hour the meteor shower
and question of course is the Alpha Moncerotids. Normally these would produce
a negligible number of meteors but this is a weird display. Dutch American
astronomer Peter Jenniskens--I hope I'm saying that righ--of the SETI Institute
and NASA Ames Research Center predicted back in 1995 that a stream of dust might
encounter earth in late November. The Alpha Monocerotids had produced short
outbursts in the past 1925 1935 in 1985 the most recent one at the time the 1985
shower briefly peaked with a ZHR of 700. And the earlier ones produce rates
closer to a thousand crossing that threshold for a meteor storm these are
high numbers but the shower itself is incredibly short, lasting just 30 to 40
minutes. The Perseids by comparison take weeks from start to finish in the peak
lasts a few days so while we're talking about a rate of say 700 an hour we're
really talking about half of that happening over a half hour that's
impressive but it isn't anything like the notoriously bursty Leonids at 1833
there was a display that had to look apocalyptic to its contemporaries the
storm produced up to 200,000 meteors per hour and they lasted for an entire night
November 21st 1995 came and as predicted there was an outburst the result was
just 400 meteors max ZHR this time so far the smallest of the outbursts we've
seen of the Alpha Monocerotids but some really good news came out of this one
armed with modern photography equipment at this point the general orbit of the
dust producing these meteors was nailed down in pretty decent detail that should
in theory make future displays more predictable
it also means we found a new long-period comet that produced this dust trail it
apparently only visits the solar system about once every 500 years or so and we
don't know which Comet dust trails get pushed around by Earth's gravity and
other planets even the solar wind pushes these little specks of
us in two different orbits and our Earth's orbit changes ever so slightly
from year to year and our moon wobbles us around just a little bit all of these
factors make knowing when the next outburst might happen a bit of a math
problem so for example when someone conjectured in 2017 that there could be
an outburst from the alphaman a certain so I thought well maybe but what's the
evidence after the date came and went the study of the shower concluded that a
hundred and twenty seven meteors detected on an all-sky camera for the
entire night out of those 127 just eight were from the Alpha Monocerotids that's
less than one per hour most years for the AMS are quite like this one meteor
per hour if you're lucky so there's a really really low basement and a pretty
high ceiling for what this meteor shower is historically capable of and here we
go again it's 2019 and the media is chatting up the AMS caller me skeptical
but wait Peter Jenniskens names on this one he accurately predicted the 1995
outburst and he's predicting another outburst in 2019 okay so this seems
promising but I can't help myself I need some source material what is actually
being predicted here predicting meteor trails like this are a bit like weather
forecasts there's probability past's history to consider
there's failure modes what's really happening here's the central bureau of
astronomy's electronic telegram from Peter Jenniskens and Esko
Lyytinen's actual report let's break it
down they report that a significant return of the alphaman a certain meteor
shower is expected on November 22nd centered at 450 UTC past dust trail
calculations Liat inand Jenniskens in 2003 were reevaluated assuming now that
past outbursts were caused by the one revolution dust trail of a long period
comet with a shorter orbital period of about 500 years so 1995 happened and we
had a rate of 400 ZHR what's being said here is that under slightly different
assumptions than the last time we could encounter this narrow dust trail and a
significant meteor event might occur if the trail was crossed
through its Center in 1925 and 1935 then the earth passed twenty thousandth of an
au from the trail Center inside the trail in 1985 and 1995 the heliocentric
distance difference of dust trail - Earth orbit will be 16 thousandths of an
au in 2019 okay there's a lot more unpack here what these astronomers are
saying is that if we assume that in 1925 in 1935 when Earth saw 1,000 ZHR from
the AMS then the slightly lower accounts seen in 1985 and 1995 can be attributed
to a miss distance on center of about two and a half earth widths I mean this
is not a lot of wiggle room considering that you can fit roughly 30 more earths
between the earth and the moon in astronomical terms these are razor thin
margins and this telegram is saying that we will miss this dust trails exact
center by just two Earth widths in 2019 that's trying to say that based on these
new affer mentioned assumptions that we could have a display at least as good as
the display in 1995 or 1985 now for the bad news good news I guess good old
uncertainty because of the uncertainty of where the trails center is the
distance could range between thirty six thousandth of an eye you and nada
depending on that distance egrets in 2019 could be about similar to or in
excess of those observed in 1995 when the zenith hourly rate was 400 now where
does that 36,000 s come from or basically double the distance from the
1995 dust trail encounter that's based on the old measurements of the dust
trails orbit which are listed here with the comment far meaning even though
we're talking just a couple tens of thousands of kilometers it's possible
that this meteor storm is a total bust but if these new calculations are
correct we are also within the margin of error that this could result in a
full-on meteor storm okay one last note path dust trail encounters were very
brief with a full width half maximum of just 0.2 nine hours that's just saying
that the center of the encounter will be at 450 UTC and the peak will last for 15
minutes on either side of that time with some stragglers before and after
likely shorter if we miss the center by any appreciable amount alright so what's
my verdict you can probably guess that since I'm making this video in the first
place you'd think that I was at least a little bit excited about it right I do
think this event is actually a little bit legit this time however we need to
give a ton of wiggle room for failure modes this could be nothing because of a
tiny miscalculation or it could be a good display or maybe it could be a
meteor storm I'm holding out a little bit of hope that some of these
calculations are correct and I hope we have something to show for it we should
also be out there observing and photographing if you're willing to brave
the cold and counting to if possible this could help researchers like Peter
and Esko further refine these predictions we do end up getting a decent display
and clear skies I'll post up my own results right here and share some
details and what I did to capture it please leave in the comments any
questions or thoughts that you have about this meteor display like it share
it and subscribe check out some of my other cool videos if those look
interesting to you until the next time get outside and learn something new
these names are hard so he told me Dutch was easy. And Esko (butchered name) Alpha
Monoceritids where actual report let's break it down