Brazilians Discover Meteor Showers

03/22/2017 - 12h24

After nearly 3 years of work and analysing nearly 86 thousand celestial records, a group of amateur astronomers has discovered two new annual meteor showers - the first discovery of this type by Brazilian researchers.

The names given to the showers take inspiration from the radiant, the locale of the celestial dome where the meteors appear to come from.

The Epsilon Gruideos emanate from one of the stars in the Grou constellation, and reach their peak around June 11.

The Caelideos, from August, come from the Cinzel constellation and enter into their peak activity period around the 5th of the month. Both of the constellations are located in the Southern celestial hemisphere.

The discovery was made by Bramon, an acronym for the Brazilian Meteor Observation Network, and was communicated on the 9th of March to the International Astronomical Union which validated the results.

With this information made publicly available, researchers throughout the world will be able to confirm and monitor the showers and discover more details about them.

The relative ease of observing a meteor shower must not be confused with the difficulty of discovering one. In addition to merely watching a large number of so-called "falling stars", discovery requires identifying those that had similar orbits between them before entering into the Earth's atmosphere and subsequently burning up.

Bramon, like other similar networks around the world, does this by attempting to observe and record the same meteors from different angles - that is why it is important to have a large number of stations located across the country.

Translated by LLOYD HARDER

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