A rare and magical "unicorn meteor shower" may light up the night sky tonight

(Photo: Shutterstock) Two meteor experts predict that hundreds of meteors will light up the sky tonight (165438+1October 2 1), which is a rare "unicorn" meteor shower.

Alpha single-core meteor shower occurs every year in165438+1October 2 1 kloc-0/65438+1October 23, but it usually only uses a few meteors to illuminate the sky. According to CNN, it is unofficially called the "unicorn" meteor shower because it can be seen in the night sky near the constellation Unicorn.

These meteors originated from the dust track of an unknown long-period comet, or a comet that takes more than 200 years to orbit the sun once. In a short technical paper, Peter Genese, a scientist at the Ames Research Center of NASA, and Esco Leitinin of the Finnish Fireball Network wrote that occasionally, the dust track of this mysterious comet will be particularly close to Earth orbit, and it can produce a large number of meteors. They say that the conditions for such a large number of meteors to appear tomorrow are correct.

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Experts write that such a meteor explosion will be possible at least in the next few centuries because the dust trajectory has been hovering in the earth's orbit for some time. Even so, the trajectory of this comet is rarely close to the earth, thus forming this spectacular scene. Another sudden outbreak occurred in 1925, 1935, 1985, 1995.

This year, the comet's trajectory was close enough to form a meteor shower similar to 1995, Janiskens and Leitinin wrote. If they are right, sky watchers may see more than 100 to 1000 meteors tonight. The outbreak peak may last only about 15 minutes, but it may also last as long as 40 minutes.

The eruption time tonight is expected to be 1 1:50 pm (4:50 GMT), but observers should start observing potential meteors at 1 1:25 pm (4:50 GMT). According to CNN, experts wrote,

People living in South America, East North America, Western Europe and Northwest Africa will have the best view. More importantly, the moon has kindly given up its position, making the scenery extraordinarily beautiful. Tonight's new moon gives off relatively little light, drowning out the spectacular sky show.

"A brief outbreak is likely to be observed," the expert wrote. Anyone who tries to observe should not be late.

The amazing photos of Perseid meteor shower are great! The spectacular photo of the Gemini meteor shower in the picture was originally published in Life Science magazine.