The Draconids

No, I'm not talking about PAC's blitzing through Lake Worth once a year at election time or certain political figures around town, but it is a good description nevertheless.

These are meteors and every year around Oct 8th, Earth passes through a minefield of dusty debris from Comet Giacobini-Zinner, source of the annual Draconid meteor shower. This year, forecasters expect Earth to narrowly miss several of the debris streams.

Next year on Oct 8, Earth will have a nearly head-on collision with a tendril of dust, setting off a strong outburst of as many as 750 meteors per hour. One year from now, sky watchers could see the strongest meteor shower since the Leonid storms a decade ago, according to spaceweather.com.

The Draconids are the result of Comet Giacobini-Zinner, which last visited our solar neighborhood in 1998. During the comet’s returns in 1933 and 1946 observers reported seeing thousands of shooting stars per hour. Normally, however, the Draconids produce only a handful of shooting stars per hour.

Best time to view the Draconids will be in the early pre-dawn hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings so says gantdaily.com.