By Chris Skeldon 
It doesn’t matter that Halloween is over, because”fire balls Halloween”, like NASAwill remain visible in the sky for the next few weeks, thanks to meteor showers from the southern Taurids.
The estimated peak of the meteor shower will occur on Saturday the fifth, according to EarthSky. Taurids are known to produce fire balls Very bright and in larger quantities – meteors can look like brightest from Venus.
This year’s rainfall is expected to cause more fireballs, in a phenomenon also known as a torpedo swarm. Usually have Southern Taurids only five meteors per hour during its peak, which occurs when the Earth is closer to the center of the debris stream. But every seven years, Jupiter’s gravity compresses the meteor stream and causes the number to increase.
“With a normal rate of fireballs, a person would have to stay outside for 20 hours straight to see one,” said Robert Lunsford, Fireball Report Coordinator for the American Meteor Society. “With Taurids, that time can be reduced a little bit, maybe even five hours. And if you’re very lucky, you can go out and see one in a few minutes. The time they show up is completely unpredictable.”
The origin of the bull
The Taurids are the result of the disintegration of a very large comet about 20,000 years ago. Among other debris, this separation created Comet Encke, which has orbited the sun for just over three years and is the shortest of any major comet in our solar system. With each pass of the Earth in its short orbit, it leaves behind a trail of debris. This path includes the Southern Taurids, a group so large that it takes several weeks to pass through the planet.
“Most meteor showers contain small bits of dust. Well, Taurids also contain some large particles,” said Bill Cook, director of NASA’s Meteorite Environment Office. “And as meteors fall, we won’t see dust particles, but rock-sized particles — some the size of a football and larger, which, of course, produce very bright fireballs.”
see a fireball
According to NASA, Taurids fireballs are meteorites over a meter in diameter, and they are exceptionally bright. It’s moving slowly because it hit Earth’s atmosphere at a vertical angle, so it’s seen traveling across the sky for a few seconds, as opposed to a millisecond of the view most meteors give us.
According to Lunsford, the brightest and longest-lived meteors can be seen cracking and disintegrating as they travel across the sky. Fireballs are often colored and appear red, orange, or yellow.
“It’s going to be like a shooting star,” said Mike Hankey, director of operations for the American Meteor Society and creator of the fireball tracking program. “But instead of lasting for half a second, it can last for three or four seconds, and instead of being as bright as a star, it can be as bright as the moon — and sometimes even brighter.”
This year, the meteorite community has already recorded an above-average increase in fireballs, while NASA has photographed fireballs that appear brighter than the moon in the night sky.
The best time to go out and spot a fireball would be 2 a.m. (6 a.m. GMT) over the next week, according to Lunsford. As the moon approaches the full moon phase, scheduled for November 8, its glow will begin to disrupt the chances of seeing less dense meteors, but fireballs, due to their size and brightness, can be seen anywhere in the world, and at any time during the night.
Other space events this year
There are four more meteor showers you can still see through 2022, according to EarthSky’s Meteor Shower Guide:
- November 12: Northern Taurus
- November 18: Leonidas
- December 14: Geminids
- December 22: Ursids
There are two more full moons in the old farmers’ calendar for 2022:
- November 8: Beaver Moon (which will culminate in a total lunar eclipse)
- December 7: Cold Moon