Eta Aquariids Peak Over GA; Eclipse Coming Mid-May

GEORGIA — The Eta Aquariid meteor shower produces many more shooting stars than fireballs, and Georgia residents can catch the celestial show at its peak early Friday morning before dawn. Coming later this month are a total lunar eclipse for Georgia, and, possibly, the very brief but also 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 mostly cloudy skies overnight in the Atlanta region.

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."

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

In Georgia, think about a trip to Stephen C. Foster State Park in Okefenokee Swamp; Popcorn Overlook, a roadside turnoff from Highway 76 between Clayton and Hiawassee; the highest point in Georgia, Brasstown Bald; along with Tybee Island and St. Simons Island on the coast.

At the 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 American Meteor Society notes that the Eta Aquariids are “swift meteors that produce a high percentage of persistent trains, but few fireballs.” The long-running shower favors the Southern Hemisphere, where it reliably produces about 60 shooting stars an hour. People living in the southern United States will get the best show, with 10 to 30 meteors an hour; anyone living along the U.S.-Canadian border may see only a smattering of shooting stars.

If that’s not reason enough to get up early (or stay up super late) and head out to a dark sky, there’s this: The Eta Aquariids are the last chance to look for meteors until the Delta Aquariid meteor shower in late July. It runs for more than a month and intersects with the summertime favorite, the Perseids.

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.

The Eta Aquariids appear to radiate from the constellation Aquarius the Water Bearer, the 10th largest in the sky but still difficult to find with the naked eye because none of its stars are especially bright. The brightest one, Sadalsuud, or beta Aquarii, is a rare yellow supergiant with a mass almost five times that of the sun. It’s relatively young for a star at 110 million years, and is about 600 light-years away.