The most intense meteor shower of the year hits Earth tonight. If the skies are clear and you live at high northern latitudes, then you could see dozens of Quadrantid meteors streaking over the pole.

Or you might spot a plane full of astronomers racing northward, trying to find out how this unusual meteor shower was created, and whether it is the shrapnel of a celestial explosion witnessed in the 15^th century.

Like other meteor showers, the Quadrantids appear when Earth moves through an interplanetary stream of debris, which hits the upper atmosphere at more than 40 kilometres a second, vaporising to become the brilliant trails we see as shooting stars.

"It is our strongest annual shower, but one that is frustratingly difficult to observe," says Peter Jenniskens of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, US. That's partly because of bad weather in the northern hemisphere at this time of year. And unless you live in the far north, the shower's radiant – the point in the sky from which the meteors appear to radiate – is below the horizon.

This year Jenniskens will be joining other astronomers on a plane festooned with cameras, which will get above the clouds and fly from Ames to the North Pole, keeping the Quadrantids in clear sight for 9 hours. By tracking the arrival rate of meteors over that time, they are hoping to discover when this stream of meteoroids was born.


Dormant comet
Some meteoroid streams are created and maintained by active comets, which throw off bits of rock and soot as the Sun gradually evaporates their ices. But there is no active comet to supply fresh material to the Quadrantids.

In fact, no parent body was known at all until 2003, when Jenniskens discovered that there is an asteroid following the same orbit as the stream. Jenniskens thinks that this object, 2003 EH1, is the remnant of a dormant comet that spawned the Quadrantids in a single violent event – perhaps an internal convulsion or an impact with another object.

Observers in China, Korea and Japan saw a comet in 1490 moving in roughly the same path as the Quadrantids. Could it have been a cloud of dust surrounding the newly shattered 2003 EH1?
http://space.newscientist.com/channel/sola...eor-shower.html

http://quadrantid.seti.org/#flux

Funny, I knew an amatuer astronomer...intensely interested in everything astronomical...


He'd have to be drugged to get on board an airplane.
He'd never be one of these folks!
Go figure!

Actually, I have no problem at all understanding where this fellow is coming from!

Oh yea...I know!

We slipped a tranquilizer into his Merlot and loaded him on-board while unconscious.
Problem is, he woke up at 27,000 feet...and was PISSED OFF (Think of Mr. T. having a fit).

Forgot everything he knew about telescopes as he thought a 5" refractor was a baseball bat and tried to smack the flight crew out of the park with it....

...Now THAT would've resulted in a really bad day for him!

The only part of a flight that most disturbs me is the landing, incredible but true, the change of preasure really bothers me during the decent.

I can only imagine how the astronauts above the shuttle would feel during take off and reentry, the chages of preasure must really pop their ears even if they are trained to obtain resistence from this.

Alex, that's not too incredible a thing to say. Frankly, it's common.
I don't think anyone's not affected by the increase in pressure during descent, nor the decrease during ascent.

I don't think it's any more intense aboard a shuttle. In fact it may not be very pronounced at all, because the cabin is pressurized to normal sea level pressure in a shuttle.

In most all airplanes it's not. Cabin pressure is mainatined at something in the vicinity of 9000 feet equlivalent, so as you ascend, you'll lose some pressure to a certain altitude, and as you descend into low altitudes, the cabin pressure gradually increases. There's a simple method of equalizing the pressure in your head if it's a bother.

Just pinch your nose shut and give a gentle blow. You'll feel your head clear right away.

I hate the smell of the recleaned air, it's very poor on the flights i have been on lately, and it's a few. Bring back the old days of smoking flights the air was actually fresher then believe it or not.
Please note i do not condone smoking - infact i hate the habit.