Alpha Capricornid Meteor Shower Peak

A major late-summer meteor shower is set to peak this weekend, providing a skywatching opportunity for many.

The Alpha Capricornids, an annual meteor shower, are viewed from the Earth in July and August. The meteor shower will be active from July 3 to August 15 this year. Over this period, there will be a chance of seeing the Capricornid meteors whenever the shower's radiant point in the constellation Capricornus is above the horizon. The radiant point will be moving across the sky and will be visible above the horizon each night, meaning the shower will be active during the hours of darkness.

Dark, clear skies are always best for seeing meteors. The meteor shower is likely to produce its best displays during the early morning hours just after Midnight, when its radiant point is highest in the sky.

The meteor shower will produce its peak rate of meteors around July 30. At this time, the maximum rate is predicted to be around ten meteors per hour. The meteors of the Alpha Capricornids seem to move more slowly and are brighter than meteors of other showers.

Alpha Capricornid meteors are debris from Comet 169P/NEAT. The shower is created from the debris in the meteor stream, which becomes visible on the earth when the earth passes through the stream. The discovery of this meteor shower is attributed to Hungarian astronomer Miklós von Konkoly Thege, who first detected several meteors originating from the region of the star Alpha Capricorni on the nights of July 28 and 29, 1871.  By the end of the 19th century other astronomers’ observations had established that the Alpha Capricornids produce a consistent meteor shower. 

Image: The brightest comet of the 2020 year C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) and the bright meteor from alpha Capricornids meteor shower, whose parent body is the comet 169P/NEAT. The image is taken in the evening July 20, 2020, above the lake Wörthsee, Bayern. (Wikimedia Commons)