Meteor shower peaks tonight

Astronomers in Vietnam and around the world will have the opportunity to observe virtual light trails in the sky during the two weekend nights due to the Taurid meteor peak.

A Taurid meteor streak appears above the park
Yellowstone nation of the United States in 2008. (Photo: National Geographic)

Taurid meteor showers appear from late October to mid November. It is listed as a weak meteor shower due to low-frequency meteorites - an average of 7 tracks per hour. They move in the air at about 27 km / sec.

Like other meteor showers , Taurid meteor showers occur when the earth moves through the dust cloud left by a comet. Comet created Taurid as Encke .

'But the dusty cloud of Taurid meteor shower contains a lot of stones about the size of pebbles,' said Michael Solontoi, an expert at the Adler Astronomical Center in the US.

When big stones hit the earth's atmosphere, they caught fire and created large light trails.

National Geographic said that people in the northern hemisphere could see the Taurid meteor if they looked to the east, where light trails seemed to originate from the constellation Taurus. That's why people named the meteor shower Taurid.

A special feature of the Taurid meteor shower is that the cloud of matter makes it split into two smaller clouds. They called two meteor showers corresponding to two clouds, "Taurid Male" and "Taurid North". Taurid South meteor shower peaked on the evening of November 5, while the Northern Taurid meteor shower peaked on November 12.

So Taurid meteor shower peaks twice within a week. During each meteor shower peak, light trails appear to appear in two different locations in the constellation Taurus.

'The best time to observe the Taurid South meteor shower is after midnight on November 5 and November 6 , ' Solontoi said.

Due to the presence of the moon in the Taurus constellation on the evening of November 12, people could not observe the Northern Taurid meteor streaks, including the brightest streaks, Solontoi announced.

Mr. Dang Tuan Duy, Chairman of the City Amateur Astronomy Club. Ho Chi Minh said that Vietnamese people also had difficulty observing the Taurid meteor shower tonight and tomorrow night due to the light of the moon and the low frequency of meteorological streaks.