It will be a dark night, the moon merely a slim crescent, when the October meteors are expected to fly in fiery shots across the sky. These famed meteors, the Draconids, are known for their extraordinary outbursts of shooting stars, with many over the years culminating in great meteor storms of several thousand meteors per hour.
Experts say a raucous meteor storm probably won’t happen this October. But then again, with meteors, no one really knows for sure.
Fortunately for all who want to catch this meteor shower, the Draconids aren’t like others that make you wait up all night. Just as darkness falls in the evening, the point where they emanate from, the radiant, rises to the top of the sky—unlike other showers that rise in the wee hours. When the radiant is high, that’s the best time for viewing meteors.
Though meteors are notoriously hard to predict, astronomers anticipate the Draconids to peak on Oct. 7 at 11:00 p.m. EDT and continue through into the wee hours of Oct. 8. Overall, they'll be short-lived, lasting from Oct. 6 through Oct. 10.
Why Are They Called the Draconids?
The Draconids—the name conjures myth and folklore and deserves an explanation. It’s simple. Their radiant point is fixed within the head of the constellation Draco, the winged dragon. Year after year, they return at roughly the same time in early October, shooting from the same constellation.Although unnecessary, it’s fun to spot Draco the Dragon in the sky while meteor viewing: Star hop from the Big Dipper’s last two vertically aligned stars at its rhombus end up to Polaris, the North Star. Polaris is the very end of the Little Dipper’s “handle.” Follow the Little Dipper as it “dips” into the curve of the back of the dragon. Then ride Draco’s S-shaped spine up to its head and find the radiant at the “Dragon’s Eyes,” the stars Eltanin and Rastaban.
Where Do the Draconids Come From?
Folks say to make a wish when you see a shooting star. Science has a less magical explanation for these darting shards of light. They’re simply bits of space debris that fall to Earth and burn up in our atmosphere. The solar system is awash with cosmic dust and frozen gas that collides with Earth as it orbits the sun. Cosmic, yes, but meteors aren’t magical.
The Draconids are part of a large complex of debris that hits Earth every October. It usually doesn’t produce many meteors, but periodically this jumble offers great meteor storms. Notably, in 1933 and 1946, observers saw several thousand meteors showering every hour. Astronomers noted that it slowed its pace in later decades, offering bursts in 1985, 1998, and 2018, though nothing like past years. In 2011, Europeans saw over 600 Draconids falling per hour.
As for the ageless question, “Where do baby meteors come from?” we now know they come from space dust. But there’s more to it. This baby meteor dust has a parent: a comet. Comets are amorphous chunks of frozen gas and rock that drift through outer space. They sometimes follow gargantuan orbits around the sun. These orbits reach far, far outside the solar system. Such orbits may take a half-dozen or dozens of years to traverse.
As comets travel through deep space, they’re frozen, but on nearing the sun they heat up. That makes them sublimate and shed matter. In their wake are vast complexes of cosmic debris spanning millions of miles. Since all this debris follows the comet, it travels along the same orbit indefinitely—unless interrupted, say, by a passing planet.
That’s just what happens. Earth hits that debris field every year as we orbit the sun—it’s as regular as clockwork. Since all that matter travels parallel along one vector, it seems to shoot from a single radiant point. Thus, the Draconids don’t actually originate from the “Dragon’s Eyes” millions of lightyears away. They’re actually very close to Earth. A trick of perspective makes it look like they begin at a place far away, much like how train tracks appear to meet at the horizon.
The Next Big Draconid Storm
Some of the mystery surrounding shooting stars and meteor showers has been explained. But there are more questions: “Can we predict when the next Draconid meteor storm will be?” The answer may lie in its parent comet: 21P/Giacobini-Zinner.This strangely-named comet was first seen in the evening sky in France by Michel Giacobini on Dec. 20, 1900. Ernst Zinner saw it again in Germany on Oct. 23, 1913. They found it along an orbit that it takes 6.6 years to traverse. Each time it reaches perihelion—the point when it’s closest to the sun— it’s about the same distance from the sun as the Earth is. Then 21P/Giacobini-Zinner bids farewell to our solar system for seven more years.
Whenever 21P/Giacobini-Zinner reaches perihelion, it sheds matter and drops a deluge of shooting stars on Earth. The last such outburst was recorded in 2018.
The experts say there won’t be any outbursts in 2024, but 21P/Giacobini-Zinner is due back in 2025. So if science holds any weight, bring a laundry list of wishes to wish upon the Draconids next year. It might be a torrential downpour.
