This year, we would be crossing the same part of our orbit where last year's meteor show took place at around 15:00 UT. Last year's outburst occurred at around 8:48 Universal Time. One factor that may unfortunately work against us, is the timing. The big question now is, can we expect the filament to return with the 2022 Perseids? The honest answer is, we simply don't know, but in spite of the unfavorable situation regarding the moon, it still would not hurt to go out before daybreak on August 14th, and check to see if anything unusual happens again. During the 1990's we interacted with the filament on multiple occasions producing unusually high numbers of meteors, but there has been little or no interaction with it during the 21st century. Over time, much of Swift-Tuttle's dust is perturbed by the gravity of Jupiter, helping scatter it into the diffuse cloud that we experience every year as the Perseid meteor shower. But there is a part of the comet's orbit in a 'mean motion resonance' with Jupiter where dust actually accumulates instead of dispersing. The comet loops around the sun every 133 years, shedding dust as it goes. Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle supplies the dross that crashes into our atmosphere each summer producing the annual Perseid display. Peter Jenniskens, an astronomer at the SETI Institute and NASA/Ames, believes it may have been something he refers to as the 'Perseid Filament,' an unexpectedly dense ribbon of dust inside the broader Perseid debris zone. Meteor shower guide 2022: Dates and viewing advice 6 meteor showers will likely offer better views than the Perseids this summer 'It made me realize something unusual was going on,' Lunsford says, 'especially so far from the predicted maximum.' A repeat this year?

(opens in new tab) Canadian meteor observer Pierre Martin, observing Ottawa, Ontario, reported 'multiple Perseids per minute with many bursts, sometimes 3-4 in a second.' In San Diego, Robert Lunsford of the International Meteor Organization also witnessed rapid-fire streaks, 2 to 3 at a time. In the hours just before dawn on August 14th, about 36 hours after the predicted peak of the shower, skywatchers got a huge surprise when meteor activity spiked sharply. 12-13, international observers counted 60 to 70 Perseids per hour-about half of the expected maximum.'īut little did anyone know that the best was yet to come. The predicted peak of the shower came and went but by normal standards it underperformed. In 2021, Perseid watchers were caught off guard by an unexpected outburst. In the absence of moonlight, a single observer might see at least 60 meteors per hour on the peak night those blessed with exceptionally dark skies might see double this rate, but thanks to the moon, those kinds of hourly rates, sadly, cannot be hoped to be approached in 2022. Perhaps up to a dozen or so forerunners of the main Perseid display might appear to steak by within an hour's watch on these mornings. A table showing dark sky opportunities for August 8, 9, and 10.

Spaceship shower