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Moonless skies offer rare glimpse of unpredictable meteor shower

Every year in late June, a minor meteor shower known as the June Boötids produces a small light-show in the northern skies, however this year, with a window of moonless sky available to us, we will not only get a better look at this shower, but this year could be one where it puts on a more spectacular show than usual.

Most meteor showers that happen throughout the year have a fairly well known number of meteors per hour, called the Zenithal Hourly Rate, but the Boötids are one of the few that changes enough year to year that the closest we can get to locking down a rate is to say it's 'variable'. Every meteor shower varies a little bit from year to year, of course, and some can go from their normal rate up to a meteor storm, like the Perseid meteor shower did this back in 1993, after Comet Swift-Tuttle (the source of the shower) swung by the Sun in December of 1992.

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The Boötids are a little different, though, in that they are very unpredictable. They can show us only one or two meteors per hour one year, and then nearly a hundred meteors per hour the next, apparently regardless of when its source — Comet Pons–Winnecke — last swept by us. According to some reports, even though Comet Pons-Winnecke last passed through the inner solar system in September of 2008, the Boötids didn't even show up in 2009. However, according to SpaceWeather.com, observers on June 27th, 1998 were treated to a 7-hour long outburst of nearly 100 meteors per hour, even though the comet made it's closest pass to the Sun two years before that.

The reason this year could be exceptional is that astronomers have still predicted a roughly 5-year to 6-year period where the Bootids give us a nice outburst, and this year might be the next one. An added bonus is that the Moon will still be below the horizon when the shower reaches its peak tonight, which is around 10:30 p.m., and the nice thing about meteor showers is that these times aren't dependent on time zone. As long as you can see the constellation Boötes, which should be visible no matter where you are (unless you're at the south pole), you have a chance to check out the show. The moon rises just before midnight, so there should be plenty of time to watch.

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There are definitely more spectacular meteor showers (like the Perseids, which peak around August 13th), but even minor showers like the June Boötids can still surprise us often enough to keep things interesting. As for whether or not the weather will cooperate with us, from the forecast it looks like Alberta and Saskatchewan will have the ideal conditions for viewing tonight.

(Images courtesy: Wikimedia Commons, Science@NASA)

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