Overnight Friday into Saturday, skywatchers could witness the fresh, first ever-seen May Camelopardalid meteor shower, weather permitting.

The Comet 209P/LINEAR, discovered Feb. 3, 2004, by the automated Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research sky survey, will make an unusually close approach to earth May 29. Despite coming within 5,150,000 miles, the periodic comet will remain no brighter than 11th far too faint for naked eye observation.

Nevertheless, the earth and the night sky of North America will pass a few days beforehand through the comet's dust and rubble trails, and a brand new, and quite possibly exceptionally dramatic, meteor shower is expected to radiate from the northern circumpolar Constellation Camelopardalis, "the leopard-spotted giraffe."

Daniel Zantzinger / Skywatcher&#8217;s Guide
Daniel Zantzinger / Skywatcher's Guide

How outstanding this new meteor shower will be remains to be seen. Calculations have indicated that this newly discovered comet has crossed the earth's orbit dozens of times since at least 1763, and has sloughed off dust trails that have piled upon one another. This month, the earth's atmosphere will pass through an estimated 25 thin trails of comet debris overnight May 23/24, precipitating a meteor shower that will peak around 1 a.m. May 24, perhaps replete with dramatic fireballs.

The question is, how many meteors per hour (Zenithal Hourly Rate) can be expected?


Astronomers Quanzhi Ye and Paul A. Weigert conservatively estimate a ZHR of about 200 per hour with the qualification that the comet's current weak dust production could make the number much lower. Compare this to the 60 or more per hour ZHR of the famed Perseid meteor shower peaking Aug. 12. Astronomers Mikhail Maslov and Esko Lyytinen, while both predicting a ZHR of around 100, concede that the uncertainties are very wide and a meteor storm level outburst (around 1,000 ZHR) is still a distinct possibility.

Though many in the media are hyping the "meteor storm" possibility, it's wiser for the skywatcher to keep expectations dampened and simply enjoy the spectacle. The reality is that no one really knows how many meteors there'll be because astronomers base their forecasts upon various models using the inexact science of meteor shower prediction.

At any rate, it is widely hoped that Comet 209P/LINEAR's latest pass will contribute material for the most spectacular meteor shower in more than a decade, providing between 100-400 meteors per hour from the Constellation Camelopardalis radiant.