Look Up! Delta Aquarid Meteor Shower Tonight

The Delta Aquarid meteor shower will take place from Sunday, July 12th through Sunday, August 23rd.

Townline, along with Professors Mike Inglis and Sean Tvelia of the observatory, will offer a guided tour of the night sky and the Delta Aquarids Meteor Shower using Montauk Observatory telescopes.

But another celestial phenomenon may make catching the show a bit tough.

The best time to watch this cosmic event is between moonset and sunrise on early Wednesday morning. On Friday, July 31 the second full moon of the month will rise into Earth’s skies-the first was July 2.

“We have tapped kegs for the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter, new moons, Venus’ greatest eastern elongation, full moons and Saturn reaching its opposition”, noted Morris.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “once in a blue moon”. The last blue moon under this definition occurred August 21, 2013. The next will be January 2018. Due to the presence of a waxing gibbous – an nearly full moon – it may be hard to spot meteors. Clear skies are a must for viewing, and getting as far away from sources of light pollution will reveal more meteors.

We’ve got a couple meteor showers coming up in the next few weeks. Each particle enters the atmosphere at more than 93,000 miles per hour (41,575 kilometers per hour), only to burn up in a momentary streak of light.

In addition, since the Delta Aquariid meteor shower is one with a fairly wide peak, it will actually still be producing some meteors at the same time as the Perseids, producing a “meteor duet” in the night sky. However, some experts have pointed to 96P/Machholz, a comet discovered by an amateur astronomer in 1986.