Virginids
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Meteor shower Virginiden |
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| activity | |
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| RA | h m |
| DE | Calling up the template: Declination with illegal parameters! |
The Virginids (named after the constellation Virgo , lat. Virgo ) are a meteor shower that occurs in March and April , the shooting stars of which seem to come from the constellation Virgo.
In contrast to most other swarms of shooting stars, the best time to observe the Virginids is not in the morning sky , but around midnight, when the constellation is almost in the south.
The radian of the Virginids active from March 1st to April 15th (according to older sources from the beginning of March to the beginning of May) lies near the bright star Spica at the celestial coordinates 200 ° / −5 °.
The maximum number of shooting stars that fly relatively slowly (at 22 to 25 km / s), the so-called Zenithal Hourly Rate (ZHR), is around 5 per hour at the beginning of April, but is not quite reached in our too far northern latitudes. The maximum is very flat because the shooting stars belong to the ecliptical type, that is, they are relatively far in the plane of the earth's orbit.
A very weak subgroup of the swarm, the Northern March Virginids , which can only be observed briefly , appears for a few days from mid-March. This year (2013) they were observed by the American Meteor Society AMS as "Class II" meteor shower between March 14th (maximum at 11:35, 8-9 °) and March 22nd.
Another branch appeared more clearly in 2011, namely from April 22nd to 25th in the eastern area of the constellation (14:15 / −11 °). The US meteor researcher Robert Lunsford called them h-Virginids .
Literature and web links
- Cuno Hoffmeister : Meteor Streams. Joh. Ambr. Barth Verlag, Leipzig 1948.
- Kosmos data table in: Which star is that. (= Kosmos nature guide. ) Franckh, Stuttgart 1958, OCLC 73569630 , p. 151.
- American Meteor Society, Observations 2010-2013
Individual evidence
- ^ Robert Lunsford: 2013 Meteor Shower List.
- ^ Robert Lunsford: 2011 Meteor Shower List. American Meteor Society.