© All Sky Cameras / Peter JenniskensThis February eta Draconid was filmed by Peter Jenniskens with one of the low-light-level video cameras of the Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance (CAMS) station in Mountain View, California, at 07:59:24 UT on February 4, 2011.
A surprise meteor shower spotted by skywatchers in February was likely caused by cosmic "bread crumbs" left over from an undiscovered comet that could potentially pose a threat to Earth, astronomers announced today (July 27).
The tiny meteoroids that streaked through Earth's atmosphere for a few hours on Feb. 4 represent a previously unknown meteor shower, researchers said. The "shooting stars" arrived from the direction of the star Eta Draconis, so the shower is called the February Eta Draconids, or FEDs for short.
The bits of space rock appear to have been shed by a long-period comet. Long-period comets whiz by the sun only rarely, so it's tough to predict when they last came through our neck of the woods - and when they'll come back, researchers said.
That uncertainty is cause for some concern in this case, they added.
"If the meteoroids can hit us, so can the comet," said FEDs discoverer Peter Jenniskens, of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center. "We don't know whether the comet has already passed us by or is still on approach."
Still, Jenniskens stressed that the chances of such a collision are extremely remote.
Comment: As Niall Bradley wrote about this phenomenon earlier this year on SOTT: Check out the latest edition of Connecting the Dots for more coverage of another sighting of a rocket trail/fireball spotted over Vytegra, Russia on 22d of June this year.