Taurid Fireballs

By Dr. Tony Phillips

**Nov. 2, 2005:** "I thought some wise guy was shining a spotlight at
me," says Josh Bowers of New Germany, Pennsylvania. "Then I realized
what it was: a fireball in the southern sky. I was doing some backyard
astronomy around 9 p.m., and this meteor was so bright it made me lose
my night vision."

Bowers wasn't the only one who saw the fireball. It was Halloween and
lots of people were outdoors. From New Jersey to Georgia, and later from
California, too, reports streamed in of meteors "brighter than a full
moon." They were the talk of local TV news programs that night.

Astronomers have taken to calling these the "Halloween fireballs." But
it wasn't just Halloween. This has been going on for days.

On Oct. 30^th^, for example, Bill Plaskon of Jonesport, Maine was
"observing Mars through a 10\" reflecting telescope at 10:04pm EST when
a brilliant fireball lit up the sky and left a short corkscrew-like
smoke trail that lasted about 1 minute."

On Oct 28^th^, Lance Taylor of Edmonton, Alberta, woke up early to go
fishing with five friends. At about 6 a.m. they "noticed a nice
fireball. Then 20 minutes later there was another," he says.

Just last night (Nov. 2^nd^) in the Netherlands, "The sky lit up very
bright," reports Koen Miskotte. "In the corner of my eye I saw a
fireball about as bright \[as a crescent moon\]."

And so on....

What's happening? "People are probably seeing the Taurid meteor shower,"
says meteor expert David Asher of the Armagh Observatory.

Every year in late October and early November, he explains, Earth passes
through a river of space dust associated with Comet Encke. Tiny grains
hitting our atmosphere at 30,000+ mph disintegrate in a flash of
light---a meteor. Because these meteors shoot out of the constellation
Taurus, they're called Taurids.

Most years the shower is weak, producing no more than 5 rather dim
meteors every hour. But occasionally, the Taurids put on quite a show.
Fireballs streak across the sky, ruining night vision and interrupting
fishing trips.

Asher thinks 2005 could be such a year.

According to Asher, the fireballs come from a swarm of particles bigger
than the usual dust grains. "They're more like pebbles," he says. (It
may seem unbelievable that a pebble can produce a fireball as bright as
the Moon, but remember, these things hit the atmosphere at very high
speed.) This swarm of pebbles moves within the greater Taurid dust
stream, sometimes hitting Earth, sometimes not.

"When Victor Clube was supervising my PhD work in the 1990s," recalls
Asher, "we came up with this model of a swarm within the Taurid stream,
to explain enhanced numbers of bright Taurid meteors being observed in
particular years."

They listed "swarm years" in their 1993 paper \[TITLE and LINK\] and
predicted an encounter in 2005. It seems to be happening.

When should you look? You might see a fireball any time Taurus is above
the horizon. At this time of year, the Bull rises in the east at sunset.
The odds of seeing a bright meteor improve as the constellation climbs
higher. By midnight, Taurus is nearly overhead, so that is a
particularly good time.

According to the International Meteor Organization, the Taurid shower
peaks between Nov. 5^th^ and Nov. 12^th^. "Earth takes a week or two to
traverse the swarm," notes Asher. "This comparatively long duration
means you don\'t get spectacular outbursts like a Leonid meteor storm."
It's more of a drizzle \--"maybe only one per hour or less," says Asher.

A drizzle of *fireballs*, however, is nothing to sneeze at. So keep an
eye on the sky this month for Taurids.