2016 Meteor Shower Calendar: Complete Dates and Times for Each Meteor Shower
Anna Swartz
If your resolution for 2016 was to see more meteor showers, you're in luck — NASA's Sky Events Calendar has a list of upcoming "celestial happenings," including every meteor shower that will occur this year.
Courtesy of NASA, here's the meteor shower lineup for 2016, all times Eastern.
Jan. 4: The first meteor shower of the year was the Quadrantids, most visible at 3:01 a.m.
April 22: The second meteor shower of the year is the Lyrids, most visible at 1:30 a.m.
May 4: Eta Aquarids will be most visible at 2:45 p.m.
July 27: Delta Aquarids will be most visible at 4:32 p.m.
Aug. 12: Perseids, most visible at 8:26 a.m.
Oct. 21: The Orionids, most visible at 12:45 a.m.
Nov. 5: South Taurids, most visible at 12:13 a.m.
Nov. 11: North Taurids, most visible at 11:29 p.m.
Nov. 17: Leonids, most visible at 5:47 a.m.
Dec. 13: The Geminids will be most visible at 6:57 p.m.
Dec. 22: The final meteor shower of 2016 will be the Ursids, which will be most visible at 3 a.m.
Meteorite Older Than Earth Discovered in Australia
After a greenish fireball streaked above the Australian Outback in November, meteorite researchers went hunting for the space rock that had caused the cosmic display.
The recovery operation involved a network of 32 remote camera observatories, a mass of complicated geographical calculations, an aerial spotter, a remotely operated drone, two human searchers, and a whole lot of luck.
It all began on 27 November 2015, when the fragment was hurtled down to Earth’s surface from space. Locals in the William Creek and Marree areas of South Australia witnessed its descent, and it was also spotted by the Desert Fireball Network (DFN) – a series of linked digital cameras that monitor the skies above the outback and look for traces of incoming meteorites. Once the rock had been spotted, the race was on to find it.
After some image analysis, triangulation, and other calculations, the search began in earnest around the Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre area – the lowest natural point in Australia – on December 29. An unmanned drone and a manned light aircraft were used to guide DFN team members, Phil Bland and Robert Howie from Curtin University, to the correct spot, with the assistance of a local search party.
Three days into the search, they found it: a 1.7-kg (3.7-lb) rock embedded in thick salt lake mud, some 42 cm (16.5 inches) below the surface. If the researchers had been a few days later, heavy rains would’ve washed away the rock for good.
According to its discoverers, the meteorite fragment is a chondrite or stony meteorite that they estimate to be more than 4.5 billion years old – not a bad innings when you consider that Earth itself has been around for about that amount of time. “It was an amazing team effort – we got there by the skin of our teeth,” said Bland.
Not only is it an exciting geological discovery that should eventually teach us more about the origins of the Universe, it’s a huge boost for the founders of the Desert Fireball Network scheme. “This meteorite is of special significance as the camera observations used to calculate the fall positions have also enabled the solar system orbit of the meteorite to be calculated, giving important contextual information for future study,” added Bland. “It demonstrates beyond doubt that this giant machine that we’ve built really works.”
The researchers believe the rock came from somewhere between Mars and Jupiter, and now the serious work of studying the object can begin. “The fact we have managed to retrieve the meteorite at all is remarkable,” said Bland’s colleague, Jonathan Paxman. “Our people worked around the clock to reduce the data, enabling rapid recovery of something that would have been lost if we’d gotten there any later.”
