A rare meteor shower called "Gamma Delphinids" is expected to take place tomorrow (Wednesday) morning at 4:28 a.m. EDT (1:28 a.m. PDT), astronomers say.
The last time a Gamma Delphinids was reportedly seen was in June 11, 1930. The event was shrouded in controversy as only three people claimed to have observed it.
Although members of the American Meteor Society (AMS), the three witnesses faced skepticism from the scientific community as many astronomers pointed the fact that, with a nearly full moon, the moonlight that night was so bright it would have outshined all but the brightest stars - certainly not a night to observe meteor showers over the southeast sky.
Yet, despite the skepticism the three witnesses maintained their report of a meteor shower between the hours of 10:15 and 10:45 p.m. from their observatory in Maryland.
Now, fast-forward over 80 years, chance has presented us with the opportunity to witness that which many astronomers believe will be an incredible show, compared to the best meteors of the year, namely Perseids and Geminids.
According to astronomers Peter Jenniskens and Esko Lyytinen, who predicted the event, the meteor shower is likely to occur at 4:28 a.m. ET on and will put an incredible show for about half an hour.
"Starting at 9:15 p.m. EST, they started seeing meteors pouring out of the small constellation Delphinus (the dolphin). The meteors had short trails and brief duration and were yellowish white," says Jenniskens, an astronomer at the SETI Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, and co-author of a 2003 study that predicted a new outburst might take place this year.
"In total the observers [in 1930] saw 51 [meteors] in the next half hour and after that, it was all over."
An online chat will be held with Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at Marshall Space Flight Center from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. ET. You can also view the video of the meteor shower taken by the telescope monitoring the skies over Huntsville, Ala., in Marshall's neck of the woods.
Gamma Delphinids travel at a speed of 57 kms per second or 127,500 miles per hour. They travel faster than meteors.
