Tomorrow Peak Ursid Meteor Shower

Harianjogja.com, JAKARTA – Tomorrow, December 23, there will be a sky phenomenon in the form of the Ursid meteor shower.

Citing the official website of Lapan, the Ursid Meteor shower is a meteor shower whose radian point (the point of origin of the meteor’s appearance) is in the constellation Ursa Minor. This meteor shower is active from December 17 to December 26 and its peak occurs on December 23 before sunrise for observers in Indonesia.

The Ursid Meteor Shower comes from the dust remnants of comet 8P/Tuttle, which orbits the Sun with a period of 13.6 years. The comet has a very elliptical orbit and an orbital tilt of 54.9°.

The maximum intensity of this meteor shower is around 10 meteors per hour. Unfortunately, only observers in the Northern Hemisphere get the best chance of observing this meteor shower. Observers located at 50 South Latitude or more South will not be able to see the Ursid meteor shower.

The Ursid Meteor Shower can be witnessed from 01.00 local time until the end of the dawn (25 minutes before sunrise) with an intensity ranging from 0.9 to 2.8 meteors per hour for the territory of Indonesia. The elevation of the radian point at the culmination varies from 5° (Kendari, 4° South Latitude) to 16° (Sabang, 6° North Latitude).

Since the Ursids seem to spread out from this particular region of the sky, meaning you can search for these faint, medium-speed meteors throughout the night if you wish.

But this year Ursid will be almost completely extinguished under the waning light of the full moon. With the peak of the Ursids coming just a few nights after the full moon, it means these meteors will be in direct competition with what will essentially be giant celestial spotlights illuminating the sky on the first full night of winter.

This is indeed a very unfortunate situation, because even when looking at the much better conditions, almost no one has ever tried to observe these meteors.

Source: JIBI/Bisnis.com

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