By Gerrit van der Plas | Special to Hawaii 24/7

You might have heard some noise being made the past days about a possible new meteor shower that could become the most spectacular one of 2014: the Camelopardalids meteor shower (named after the constellation from which the shooting stars will seem to radiate).

If everything goes as predicted, you will be able to see many tens of shooting stars / hour in the northern sky coming Friday night the 23rd of May between about 9 p.m. and midnight.

I used the words “if” and “could” on purpose. Because this is the first time people from earth will be able to see this meteor shower, we have no way to predict what we will see. Estimates, however, have been made, and those are spectacular! A whopping 100 to 400 shooting stars are expected per hour during the peak of this meteor shower.

A new meteor shower or, perhaps, storm?

Camelopardalis as depicted in Urania’s Mirror, a set of constellation cards published in London c. 1825.

The shooting stars from this meteor shower will come from the a few of the dust trail left by the comet 209P / LINEAR. This comet was discovered only in 2004, and takes about 5 years to complete one orbit around the sun. According to the latest calculations, we will (coming Friday) cross all the debris trails of the comet ejected between 1803 and 1924!

Viewing tips for Hawaii

The location of Hawaii is pretty o.k. when it comes to observing this meteor shower, and we heartily recommend everybody to go out for some stargazing on Friday night

The radiant for this meteor shower is low in the northern sky, in the constellation “Camelopardalis” (close to the big dipper and polaris). This means that most shooting stars will appear to be coming from just above the northern horizon. The timing of the meteor shower (the peak is at 07:21 UTC on May 24th which means 9:21 p.m. on May 23 Hawaii Standard Time) is great, as is the fact that the moon will not have risen yet.

The night will be very dark (the moon only rises at 2:13 a.m. on May 24th) and the expected activity of this meteor shower is so high that (if the predictions come true) you will be able to see tens of shooting stars per hour.

If you are planning to watch this meteor shower, we recommend that you have a look at our meteor shower guide for viewing tips and meteor background information specifically tuned for Hawaii. You can also have a look here if you want to find out more about stargazing on Hawaii.

Further reading

If you want to find out more about this meteor shower we point you to the well written article on Slate by astronomer Phil Plait.

For live, on-line coverage have a look at the website of virtualtelescope.eu.