A once in a lifetime event

[Amelia]

Rare meteor shower early Saturday morning

Friday, August 31, 2007

By TERESA BELL, kgw.com Staff

Sky-watchers, set your alarm clocks.

A host of colorful meteors will be making a guest appearance in the Oregon skies before dawn Saturday morning.

The West Coast is expected to be one of the best places to watch the rare 90-minute meteor show, which stargazing experts said should peak at around 4:30 a.m.

The Aurigid Meteor Shower is caused by the earth's passage through a dust trail left by a comet when it passed the sun, a full two-thousand years ago. The dust trail is very narrow, so Earth will be sprayed by meteoroids for only about an hour and a half. The meteoroids will approach from the direction of the constellation Auriga, the charioteer, in the north-eastern part of the sky, hence the name, "Aurigids."

The best place to go to see the meteor shower will be away from the lights of the city, from dark, open skies around 4 a.m.

“With the waning gibbous Moon behind an obstruction, and with a wide view on the sky... Gaze up at the sky and spot one of these elusive bits of matter that Comet Kiess lost 2000 years ago,” OMSI Planetarium Manager Jim Todd advised. “Astronomers are predicting anywhere from 100 to 1,000 meteors an hour during the peak on Saturday morning. The weather forecast has mostly cloudy for Portland area, while mostly clear for eastern Oregon.”

Saturday morning will be the only opportunity to see the Aurigid Meteor Shower in our lifetime, so Todd assured it would be worth losing sleep over.