How to watch - and 'listen' - to tonight's meteor shower
Meteors, dubbed the Camelopardalids for the constellation they appear to emanate from, may start appearing before midnight, with a peak in the wee hours of
Saturday morning before daybreak, about 2-4 a.m.
Earth is expected to pass through a debris trail left behind a comet that was discovered in 2004 and named Comet 209P/LINEAR. The shower could mean 100 "shooting stars" per hour, or more. Some scientists have suggested rates of up to 400 meteors per hour.
But if you can't see them -- whether because of city lights, clouds, or because there is still uncertainty over how abundant they may be -- there are other ways to witness the shower.
According to Space.com, when meteors burn up in the atmosphere, they ionize air molecules that "can scatter and reflect radio waves, in much the same way that jet contrails scatter sunlight, leaving a glowing trail in the darkening sky after sunset."
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Or else there will be several live webcasts of the shower from around the world, including from the Slooh telescope, the Virtual Telescope Project, and Space.com.