Will UAE see the massive meteor shower tonight?

People in the UAE as well as across the globe are gearing up for a massive celestial event in the sky later tonight that will continue into Tuesday morning.

The meteor that is named Tau Herculids meteor could either be a complete fail or light up the entire sky. It has the potential to be a meteor storm of 1,000 shooting stars per hour and it happens when the Earth passes through a huge amount of space rocks.

Hasan Al Hariri, CEO, of Dubai Astronomy Group and Director of Al Thuraya Astronomy Center, said, “This news came from the Nasa Marshall space center. This happens when the comet is fragmented. Our planet is expected to go inside the debris of that comet…the tail and the leftovers from that comet. So, we are going into the debris area. Scientists are expecting a lot of falling debris from Monday till Tuesday morning. Europeans and Americans will get a better view of this. For us, visually, it may not be that great an event in the UAE. But we’ll definitely be able to view this meteor shower. Scientists are anticipating the number of debris falling on the ground will be intense. That’s why it is called a meteor storm. When the Meteor storm happened in 1999….the Leonid shower was beautiful. A very dense cloud containing this material hovered around the Earth’s atmosphere. So, it looked like shooting stars everywhere and the frequency was really high. The number of meteors falling per hour sometimes could go into thousands. This phenomenon is unique and happens rarely. It’s been recorded since ancient times. So, it’s natural that people feel excited. Sometimes, people even feel scared that the sky is falling. This has also been recorded by many people in their paintings.” 

Scientists have explained that could also fizzle out completely. One NASA scientist called it an “all or nothing event.”

Hariri added, “In 2014 we were also told about the Cumulus meteor shower and thought it would be intense. But it wasn’t intense. We were in the desert, and we were expecting to see thousands of meteors. But we could only see four or five. So, it’s not always assured but there is a possibility it may be intense. These are faint things, and we cannot observe them without our telescopes.”

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Shedding light on the favorable time for sky viewing, Hariri explains, “The best time to observe it from Dubai or the Middle East will be after 1:00 am till Tuesday morning. This is the time when the Earth will be facing the debris (side) and will be observing the meteor falling from the Eastern direction. The peak will be tonight. But in the UAE, it will be around 4pm. The Sun will be high in the sky that time so it will not be visible very well from here.”