A Winter Solstice Meteor Shower

The annual Ursid meteor shower always peaks near the time of the December winter solstice.

The Ursid shower will have to contend with the light of a bright waxing gibbous moon across the weekend and in the days ahead. This shower favors the more northerly latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. Even at far northerly latitudes, it’s generally a low-key production, not nearly as exciting as the Quadrantids in early January. Not scared off yet? Keep reading, and you just might see some meteors.

The 2016 Ursid meteor shower, will probably peak on the night of December 21 (best in the hours before dawn on December 22) has been observed for only a single century.

Ursid is produced by dust grains left behind by comet Tuttle, which was first discovered in 1790. The shower runs annually from December 17-25.

All meteors in annual showers have radiant points on our sky’s dome, and the showers take their names from the constellations in which the radiant points lie. The Little Dipper asterism is in the constellation Ursa Minor the Lesser Bear – hence, the Ursid meteor shower.

This shower has been known to produce short bursts of over 100 meteors per hour. But typically the shower is much sparser than that. In a dark sky, it might produce only five to 10 meteors per hour at its peak.

Source: EarthSky