New Meteor Shower Coming, Other Than Leonids...11/16/99
 Sky & Telescope

The Earth will come very close to the orbit of Comet  LINEAR (C/1999 J3), which crossed the ecliptic (the plane of Earth's orbit) on October 2nd. If the comet left any debris behind, we may see meteors. Image created with Starry Night Pro 3.0 by Sienna Software.
 
A recently discovered comet has a small chance of producing a new meteor shower sometime during the early part of November. The comet in question is Comet LINEAR (C/1999 J3) which was discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) team on May 12th. At the time, the new object was initially identified as an asteroid. Only later did observers at Klet Observatory in the Czech Republic correctly determine its cometary nature. During September and October many observers watched as Comet LINEAR brightened to better than 8th magnitude. The key to the comet's potential to producing a possible meteor shower lies in its orbit, which brought LINEAR to perihelion on September 20th at a point just inside Earth's orbit.

According to Sky & Telescope's meteor expert, Joe Rao, Comet LINEAR crossed through the descending node of its orbit on October 2nd at a point roughly 0.011 a.u. (1.7 million km/1.1 million miles) from Earth's orbit. Earth will arrive at this point in space just 40 days later, on November 11th. The moment when Earth passes closest to the comet's nodal crossing point comes at 2:43 p.m. EST/11:43 a.m. PST. Unfortunately -- daylight for North America, although well into evening darkness over Europe.

 

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