Disappointing Camelopardalids Had a Hidden Show

Despite the fact that the May Camelopardalids meteor shower was not what many had drummed it up to be, photos and videos have revealed that the night still had some hidden gems.

The Shower, which was best visible between 6:00 and 8:00 Universal Time - but was occurring all night - took place between May 23 and May 24.

NASA's Dr. Bill Cooke, head of the agency's Meteoroid Environment Office, had warned stargazers that because the May Camelopardalids was a never-before-seen shower, the results were unpredictable.

"We have no idea what the comet was doing in the 1800s," Cooke said.  As a result of the uncertainty, "there could be a great meteor shower - or a complete dud."

Meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through a cloud of dust and debris left behind in the wake of a comet that is orbiting closer and closer to the Sun. The dust would then burn up in the atmosphere, causing vivid streaks across the sky. Experts had determined that the periodic comet 209P/LINEAR had left such a cloud back in the 1800s, but observational tools had not been able to determine just how thick this cloud was.

Many experts had been hopeful, expecting that a "fresh" dust trail could mean a meteor storm, where up to 1,000 meteors could streak across the sky in an hour at its peak. Unfortunately, that prediction had been proven wrong when vigilant stargazers stayed up all night on May 23 only to see five to ten meteors in all (never mind in an hour). For many North American's on the East Coast, the show had been even worse, with rainclouds blacking out the sky.

However, there were still some hidden gems to see for those lucky enough to catch them. The few meteor streaks that were visible were incredibly bright, many stargazers report. Gavin Heffernan, viewing the show from Joshua Tree National Park, Cali., managed to snag images of a meteor streaking across the sky only to leave a cloud of vaporized remains called a "persistent cloud train" - a phenomenon only visible with very vivid showers. Even those far north were able to see the occasional streak through the northern lights simply because of how bright these meteors were.

A few days before and then again after, the Virtual Telescope Project was able to snag photos of the comet that caused this spectacle, with 209/LINEAR streaking across the sky before dawn this past Memorial day.