Eta Aquariids Peak Over Maryland; Tau Herculids Next Up

MARYLAND — The Eta Aquariid meteor shower produces many more shooting stars than fireballs, and Maryland residents can catch the celestial show at its peak early Friday morning before dawn. Coming later this month are a total lunar eclipse for Maryland and, possibly, the very brief but also very intense Tau Herculids meteor shower.

The Eta Aquariids, which the American Meteor Society calls “swift meteors that produce a high percentage of persistent trains, but few fireballs,” have a broad peak that ends Friday morning. Under clear skies, patient meteor watchers can reliably see between 10 and 30 meteors an hour.

The National Weather Service forecast calls for partly cloudy skies overnight, with a 20 percent of rain early Friday morning in Maryland.

The Eta Aquariids continue through May 27.

If It Happens, Tau Herculids Will Be Intense

Although the Eta Aquariids are typically the last sky shooting star show until summer, 2022 could see a bonus meteor shower — the Tau Herculids, which will peak overnight May 30-31. EarthSky.org described the possible shower as “brief but intense.”

“Meteors aren’t uncommon,” Bill Cooke, who leads NASA’s Meteoroid Environmental Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, wrote in a blog on the agency’s website. “Earth is bombarded every day by millions of bits of interplanetary detritus speeding through our solar system."

It’s not a sure thing. It depends on the speed at which debris from a fragmenting comet — 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, or SW3 — is traveling through space.

“This is going to be an all or nothing event,” Cooke wrote. “If the debris from SW3 was traveling more than 220 miles per hour when it separated from the comet, we might see a nice meteor shower. If the debris had slower ejection speeds, then nothing will make it to Earth and there will be no meteors from this comet.”

As with most meteor showers, the best viewing times are in the predawn hours around the peak, according to EarthSky.org.

For the best chances to see shooting stars, find a dark sky free of city lights.

In Maryland, sky-watchers recommend viewing from Greenbelt Park in Prince George's County. Also check with theUniversity of Maryland observatory in College Park and UMBC observatory near Catonsville to see if in-person viewing is being offered.

At the Aquariids peak, expect to see 10 or 30 shooting stars an hour. If skies are clear, viewing conditions will be much better than for April’s Lyrid meteor shower, which played second fiddle to a bright moon. This year, a waxing crescent moon setting during the evening will make for moonless predawn skies.

• Related: 2022 Guide To Meteor Showers, Supermoons, Eclipses

The flash of light known as a meteor occurs when meteoroids — “space rocks” ranging in size from a dust grain to a small asteroid — enter the Earth’s atmosphere, or that of another planet, at a high speed and burn up. Meteors fly on any given night, according to NASA, but when several are seen in a short period, it’s called a meteor shower.

Meteor showers occur annually or at regular intervals when Earth passes through the dusty debris trails left by a comet and, in a few cases, asteroids.

Halley’s Comet, which visits our solar system every 75 years or so, is the parent of both the Eta Aquariid meteor shower and the Orionid meteor shower in October. That’s because the comet is in a retrograde orbit around the sun — that is, in the opposite direction of Earth and other planets — so Earth passes near its path twice.

Total Lunar Eclipse At Mid-Month

The moon will turn red with a total lunar eclipse — what’s called a blood moon — during the late evening hours of May 15 and early morning hours of May 16, depending on your time zone.

The lunar eclipse begins at 10:28 p.m. Eastern on May 15 and will reach its maximum at 12:11 a.m. on May 16, according to TimeandDate.

The May full moon is also known as the full flower moon.