Southern Taurid Meteor Shower Peaks With Potential Fireballs Tonight

The Southern Taurid meteor shower reaches its peak overnight on Wednesday, Nov. 4, into early Thursday, Nov. 5, offering stargazers a chance to spot bright fireballs lighting up the night sky. The celestial event peaks around midnight local time when the constellation Taurus sits high in the southeastern sky. While considered a moderate shower that typically produces around five meteors an hour under dark skies, some of these shooting stars can blaze brighter than Venus.

The source of the Taurids is Comet Encke, a celestial body approximately 3 miles wide that circles the Sun every 3.3 years, holding one of the shortest orbits of any known comet. Scientists theorize that Encke is a fragment of a much larger comet that broke apart tens of thousands of years ago. Unlike most meteor showers that originate from tiny dust grains, the Taurids carry larger pieces, some roughly the size of pebbles. These larger fragments hit Earth's atmosphere at about 17 miles per second, a relatively slow pace for a meteor that allows the fireballs time to blaze across the atmosphere instead of vanishing instantly.

Amid chatter about falling space debris, experts note that any bright streaks seen tonight are far more likely to be pieces of the ancient comet rather than NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. The roughly 3,200-pound spacecraft was projected to reenter Earth's atmosphere on Wednesday, nearly 22 years after its launch, but its low orbit restricted surviving fragments to a band south of the continental United States. NASA estimated the risk of the spacecraft reentry harming anyone on Earth at approximately 1 in 2,100.

Viewers hoping to catch a glimpse of the Southern Taurids are advised to find a dark location away from city lights and give their eyes 20 to 30 minutes to adjust to the dark. Experts suggest leaving telescopes and binoculars at home, as magnification can narrow the field of view, and recommend looking at a patch of sky slightly away from the Taurus constellation to catch longer, more visible streaks. Favorable conditions are forecasted in many areas, and the waning crescent moon, which is only about 17 percent lit, will not rise until a couple of hours before dawn.

Recent sightings have already been reported internationally. A meteor was spotted in Singapore on Nov. 4 from Choa Chu Kang, with videos shared widely on social media showing a fireball with a long tail. Observers in neighboring Malaysia also reported sightings of the same celestial phenomenon, which the Science Centre Observatory characterized as slow, bright meteors and occasional fireballs.

Following the peak of the Southern Taurids, the Northern Taurids are scheduled to follow a week later, peaking overnight from Nov. 11 into Nov. 12 at a similar rate. Other upcoming celestial events later in the season include the Leonids in mid-November and the Geminids in December, which can deliver up to 120 meteors an hour. Stargazers who capture a Taurid fireball can submit sighting reports to the American Meteor Society to help scientists track the trajectories of the debris.