Southern Taurid meteor shower hits peak activity this week: When and where to watch
The Taurids may not have earned the hype and name recognition that accompany other meteor showers like the Orionids, but skygazers may still find it worthwhile to look up to catch a shooting star or two when they peak.
Famously slow and long-lasting, Taurid meteors move across the sky at about 65,000 miles per hour – a fraction of the whizzing 148,000 mph meteors of the Orionid shower. But while the Orionids are considered the most beautiful and the Perseids are lauded as the best of the meteor showers, the Taurids have one thing going for them: Fireballs.
Each year, both the Northern and Southern branches of the Taurids are responsible for increased reports of fireballs, large explosions of light and color, when they become visible for several weeks late in the year. November is when the meteors produced by both branches of the Taurid meteor stream will be most active, beginning this week with the Southern Taurids.
Here's when and how spectators can give themselves the best chance of witnessing this year's peak Taurids activity.
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When can you see the Southern Taurid meteor shower?
Southern Taurid meteors can be seen when the constellation Taurus is above the horizon between September and November, according to NASA.
While the Southern Taurids are active each year between Sept. 23 and Dec. 8, astronomers anticipate that the celestial light show will be most visible Monday and Tuesday, according to the American Meteorological Society.
The Northern Taurids, which are active between Oct. 13 and Dec. 2, will then peak around Nov. 11 and Nov. 12.
Lasting for weeks, the Taurid meteor streams tend to be slow moving with higher visibility compared to other meteor showers like the Orionids and Perseids.
Even at their peak, neither the Southern nor Northern branches of the Taurid meteor stream are particularly frequent, producing only about five meteors an hour.
But the meteors they do produce are famously big and bright, leading to an increase in fireball activity when they're active at the same time, the American Meteorological Society says.
How to watch the Taurids
The Taurids, which come from the approximate direction of the Taurus constellation, are visible practically anywhere on Earth with the exception of the South Pole.
The best time of day to see the activity tends to be after midnight and before dawn. That's when the moon won't interfere with the display and the Taurus constellation, which is where the meteors seem to emerge – or radiate, according to Earth Sky, a website devoted to astronomy and Earth sciences.
Located northeast of the Orion constellation, Taurus can be identified by finding the bright red star known as Aldebaran and the dipper-shaped star cluster Pleiades. And as long as stargazers are in a dark location, equipment like telescopes and binoculars shouldn't be necessary to glimpse a shooting star.
"Hunting for meteors, like the rest of astronomy, is a waiting game, so it's best to bring a comfy chair to sit on and to wrap up warm as you could be outside for a while," according to Royal Museums Greenwich.
What causes the Taurid meteor shower?
Meteor showers occur when Earth passes through dusty debris trails left by comets and other space objects as they orbit the sun. The debris – space rocks known as meteoroids – collides with Earth's atmosphere at high speed and disintegrates, creating fiery and colorful streaks in the sky, according to NASA.
Those resulting fireballs, better known as "shooting stars," are meteors. If meteoroids survive their trip to Earth without burning up in the atmosphere, they are called meteorites, NASA says.
Astronomers believe the meteors produced by both Taurid streams are debris left behind by Encke’s comet.
Thought by some astronomers to be a piece of a larger comet that broke up tens of thousands of years ago, Encke has the shortest orbital period of any known comet within the solar system, taking 3.3 years to orbit the sun.
Each time the comet Encke returns to the inner solar system, its comparatively small nucleus sheds ice and rock into space to create a vast debris stream.
The debris stream is dispersed across such a large swath of space that it takes Earth a lengthy time to pass through it. That's why we see two segments of the same debris cloud, according to Royal Museums Greenwich: the Northern Taurids and the Southern Taurids.
Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]