Skip to footer

Delta Aquarid meteor shower: How to watch it online

The Delta Aquarids peak on Monday and Tuesday night. If you can't catch the meteor shower in person, here are some ways to view it online. 

|
Jeff Berkes
A Delta Aquarid meteor flashes over Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming in July 2008.

The Delta Aquarid meteor shower is peaking from tonight (July 28) into Tuesday (July 29), and even if you can't catch the cosmic show in person, you can still see live views of the annual shower online.

The online Slooh Community Observatory will host a webcast featuring the Delta Aquarid meteor shower as seen from Arizona and the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa, weather permitting. Experts will also be on hand to discuss the celestial sight. You can watch the Delta Aquarid webcast here at Space.com, or you can check it out directly through Slooh.com. The live show will begin at 10 p.m. EDT tonight (0200 July 29 GMT), and you can participate in the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #SloohShower.

Astronomers predict that the peak of the shower will produce about 16 meteors per hour, Slooh representatives said. While the Delta Aquarid shower usually isn't spectacular, this year it falls during a new moon, meaning the dim "shooting stars" should stand out against the dark night sky. Slooh is planning to use special equipment for the webcast to show as many meteors as possible. [The Best Skywatching Events of July 2014 (Gallery)]

"The results obtained by this new equipment are what's primarily fascinating," Slooh astronomer Bob Berman, who will provide commentary during the webcast, said in a statement. "We're hoping to capture more meteors than ever before, despite the modest nature of this relatively little-known shower."

NASA will also host a meteor shower webcast, if weather allows, on July 29 starting at 9:30 p.m. EDT (0130 July 30 GMT). The space agency's Delta Aquarid live stream will feature views of the shower from NASA's Marshall Space flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. You can also watch the NASA webcast on Space.com or watch through NASA directly.

Scientists still aren't exactly sure of the origin of the Delta Aquarids, although people have started to unravel the mystery, according to Slooh representatives. Astronomers now think the meteor shower is produced when Earth travels through the debris left behind by Comet Macholtz, which was discovered in 1986.

"The slightly mysterious nature of these often-overlooked shooting stars adds to the night's fun," Berman said.

Annual meteor showers are created when Earth passes through a field of debris left in a comet's wake. The particles sloughed off by the cosmic body burn up in the atmosphere, creating the shooting stars people see from dark places on the ground.

Editor's Note: If you snap an amazing photo of the Delta Aquarid meteor shower or any other night sky sight and would like to share it with Space.com, send images and comments to managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Copyright 2014 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Delta Aquarid meteor shower: How to watch it online
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0728/Delta-Aquarid-meteor-shower-How-to-watch-it-online
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe