The Aurigid Meteor Shower will peak before dawn on Sunday, Sept. 1. The rare meteor shower has been recorded only four other times--in 1935, 1986, 1994, and 2007.
According to Yahoo News, the meteor shower has been hard to spot because of how erratic debris steam is. The debris is left behind by the Comet Kiess, which takes between 1,800 and 2,000 years to orbit around the Sun.
Six years ago, NASA described the shower as “a flurry of bright and oddly-colored meteors,” which “come streaming out of the constellation Auriga, putting on a beautiful early morning show for sky watchers in western North America: sky map.”
The meteor shower will reach its peak at 8 a.m. on Sunday. The best time to see the meteors is before sunrise, however, according to the American Meteor Society (AMS).
The meteor shower is difficult to view for residents in the Southern Hemisphere.
“Hourly rates will range from 3-5 in the northern hemisphere down to 0-2 in the southern hemisphere. The radiant is well placed for northern observers high in the northeastern sky during the last hour before the start of morning twilight. South of the equator, this shower is not well seen as it lies low in the northern sky during the morning hours. With an entry velocity of 67 km/sec., most activity from this radiant would be swift,” according to the AMS.
Earthsky.org said that the meteors are “swift,” at 41 miles per hour.
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