Taurid Meteors

The Taurid meteor shower has a double identity. It’s split into two different streams, which peak a few nights apart in early November. Neither stream is particularly impressive, but things pick up when they overlap.

Their story begins thousands of years ago, with the breakup of a big ball of ice and dust – Comet Encke. The biggest remaining chunk kept that name. But the breakup created several other big pieces, plus clouds of dust. The whole messy bunch is known as the Encke Complex.

The southern Taurid stream consists of small bits of dust and rock shed by Encke itself. The northern stream is produced by one of its offspring – an asteroid that wasn’t discovered until 2004.

Both streams contain a lot of debris, but it’s spread across tens of millions of miles. So it takes Earth weeks to fly through the streams. That means the twin showers last a long time, but they’re not usually all that noteworthy – at best, they produce no more than a handful of meteors per hour. Things are a little busier when the showers overlap, as they’re doing now.

Unfortunately, the Moon will be full in a couple of days, so it’ll overpower almost all of the Taurids. The streams do produce a few especially bright meteors, but that’s about the best we can expect from the shower with a dual identity.

The Taurid Complex may include some especially big, dangerous chunks of debris, and we’ll talk about that tomorrow.

Script by Damond Benningfield