Shooting star shower to pass over Britain

Britain's skies could be lit up by an array of shooting stars on Saturday night as the Earth has a rare encounter with the tail of a comet.


As many as 750 meteors an hour are expected to streak across the sky from dusk until about 10pm, according to NASA experts.

Space scientists are worried that the shower, known as the Draconids, could damage satellites by frying their electronics and sending them out of control.

The light show comes as Earth passes through a cloud of dust left behind by a comet called Giacobini-Zinner, with previous storms occurring in 1933 and 1946.

There were also high rates of meteors seen in 1985, 1998 and 2005, but unlike the Perseids shower in Summer the Draconids are not an annual event.

In most years the Earth misses the stream of comet debris and nothing is seen at all.

Streaks left by meteors could appear in any part of the sky but their paths will trace back to the constellation of Draco, the Dragon, which gives them their name.

Many of the meteors may be lost in the glare of a waxing Moon that is approaching its Full phase, but Britain is well placed to view the shower if skies are clear, unlike America where it will still be daylight when it happens.

Robin Scagell, of the Society for Popular Astronomy, said: "The UK is perfectly placed to witness this rare spectacle. Stargazers will have their fingers crossed for clear skies so that we can see just what happens."

NASA experts mapped the cloud of dust left behind by the comet, which orbits the Sun once every six and a half years, and found that on Saturday night our planet will pass through a stream of debris dating back to 1900.

The predictions are thought to be sufficiently strong that scientists will fly aboard two Falcon 20 aircraft over Scandinavia to photograph the event.

Others from NASA and Japan have travelled to Germany and Uzbekistan for a ringside seat.

The shooting stars will burn up in Earth's atmosphere but astronomers will also be viewing the Moon, which has no atmosphere, through their telescopes to see flashes from Draconids hitting its surface.

Some fear the shower will threaten orbiting satellites and even the International Space Station as they orbit the Earth.

Though the meteor particles will only be the size of grains of sand, electric charges given off when they hit a spacecraft at high speed could short-circuit satellites' sensitive electronics and send them spinning out of control.

The Draconids' dust particles travel through space at around half the speed of other meteor streams and scientists are hopeful that this will make them less of a threat to their spacecraft.