On Oct. 8-9, European sky watchers were amazed when a flurry of faint meteors filled the sky at midnight. It was an outburst of the annual Draconids meteor shower. Turns out, that outburst was just the tip of the iceberg. Computer models show that Earth narrowly missed two streams of comet debris that would have caused significant meteor storms had they intersected our planet. These conclusions are based on a computer model of the comet’s debris field from the University of Western Ontario’s Meteor Physics Group. Here it is, showing Earth shooting the gap between two filaments of comet dust:
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It could easily have been 10 times more impressive. In fact, Earth narrowly dodged a meteor storm.
The European outburst occurred as Earth skirted a filament of debris from Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner. If that filament had shifted in our direction by a mere 0.005 AU (~500,000 miles), Earth would have experienced a worldwide storm of 1000+ meteors per hour.
Complete story at spaceweather.com
The Goblin Planet has been found just before Halloween.
Scientists have discovered yet another marker on the trail toward the putative Planet Nine.
That clue is 2015 TG387, a newfound object in the far outer solar system, way beyond Pluto. The orbit of 2015 TG387 shares peculiarities with those of other extremely far-flung bodies, which appear to have been shaped by the gravity of a very large object in that distant, frigid realm — the hypothesized Planet Nine, also known as Planet X.
https://www.space.com/41995-dwarf-planet-the-goblin-discovery-planet-nine.html
This might explain something I observed during a summer vacation in the 1950’s. I was laying on the lawn of our vacation home in Kennebunkport Maine looking up at the sky. I noticed very faint meteors were coming down like rain. I watched for about 15 minutes. Have always wondered why 60 meteors per hour was considered a large meteor shower.
Gordon Morrison
Gordon – what do you think explains it?
I always thought it was a normal meteor shower but with a particularly dense concentration of source cometary particles. Not knowing the exact date or time (I was only 12 at the time) later in life I was unable to attach it to a particular shower. I would be interested to know if anyone else has seen a similar meteor shower.