Sporadic Meteor
What is a sporadic meteor? Sporadic meteors come from fragments and particles of solar system dust that travel around our Sun. Sporadic meteors are not associated with a meteor shower, their rendezvous with Earth are capricious and truly random or sporadic; therefore giving them their name “sporadic meteors”.
On any given night a viewer may see about five sporadic meteors. An interesting thing to do while viewing a meteor shower is determine whether or not you witnessed a sporadic meteor or one from the shower. The way to do this is to evaluate the path of the meteor and trace it’s backward path to the meteor shower radiant that is occurring on that day.
During the Quadrantids meteor shower that occurred in early January, I saw two meteors that I believed to be sporadic; they virtually shimmered across the sky in a completely different direction from the other meteors that were falling.
I should add there are two minor meteor showers occurring in February, the α-Centaurids that started January 28th, peaked on February 7th and ends February 21st, the δ-Leonids that starts February 15th, peaks on February 25th and ends March 10th and the γ-Normids that starts February 25th, peaks on March 13th and ends March 22nd. The γ-Normids is the only meteor shower of March. All of these meteor showers will produce very minimal results of about five meteors per hour during peak days.
The next meteor shower to produce greater results is the Lyrids that will occur April 15th through April 25th and will peak on April 22nd. The Lyrids should produce about fifteen to twenty meteors per hour during its peak.
Until then, keep your head up, bookmark the site and check out the MeteorBlog Shop. You never know, you may see a sporadic meteor in a dark sky.
- Meteor Mark
on Feb 15th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
So, I’m standing outside this morning, about 10:30 am I’d guess, looking to the southwest, and there was a huge fireball in the sky was coming down. I didn’t hear anything hit, and it appeared to flame out before it crossed the horizon line…but I can’t find any news about it…and with anything in the sky, it’s really hard to tell how far away something is.
I’m not finding anything on local or national news about it, but then, I’m not sure where I should be looking. I would think that anything visible in the bright sunlight would be either close or it would be big…any idea where I should be looking for more information?
Thanks!
on Feb 15th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
DeAnne,
I would look for it in local media. Sounds like you saw debris from the recent collision of two satellites that occurred last week. I will be making a thread about it later today given us all some new information. The object was likely to have burned up in the atmosphere 40 to 60 miles high. I am assuming you are from Texas, where there has been reports of this incident.
- Meteor Mark
on Feb 16th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Update February 16th, 2009
This event has been classified as a natural event. Please read the post: Sporadic Meteors for more information.