The Omicron Eridanids meteor shower
Key facts
- Peak
- around 16–17 November
- Active
- about 10–27 November
- Rate at peak (ZHR)
- very low (detected mainly by video)
- Speed
- about 29 km/s
- Radiant
- Eridanus (near the star Omicron¹ Eridani, south-west of the Pleiades and Hyades)
- Parent body
- Unknown
Dates shift slightly from year to year. This year's peak is in the events calendar, and the meteor-shower planner shows how high the radiant climbs from where you live, night by night.
The Omicron Eridanids are a slow November shower from the northern end of Eridanus. They peak on the same nights as the Leonids but come from a different part of the sky and move at less than half their speed.
Discovery. The shower was one of eleven found in 2009 by the Tokyo observer Takashi Kanamori from two years of multi-station video data. Its meteors have orbits only slightly tilted to Earth's, which is why they enter the atmosphere slowly, at about 29 kilometres per second.
The radiant. The radiant lies near Omicron¹ Eridani, in the upper reaches of Eridanus, the River, just south of the celestial equator. It is south-west of the Hyades, the V-shaped star cluster that forms the face of Taurus. In November this area is high in the south around midnight.
A Taurid neighbour. The Omicron Eridanids are active during the long Taurid season, and their speed and direction are not very different from those of the Southern Taurids, which come from comet Encke and its relatives. Whether the Omicron Eridanids are a separate stream or a branch of the Taurid complex is a question that measured orbits help to answer; the shower is listed separately in the international catalogue, and its parent is unknown.
What to expect. Very few meteors. Most slow meteors from this direction in November will be Taurids. Cameras are needed to tell the two apart.
Viewing. The radiant is near the celestial equator, so it can be seen from both hemispheres. From the UK it is well placed around midnight. Mid-November nights are long and dark, and the Leonids add fast meteors to the sky in the early morning.
Viewing tips
- Watch around midnight, when Taurus and northern Eridanus are high in the south.
- Find the V of the Hyades and look south-west of it.
- Expect slow meteors, easily confused with Taurids.
- Use a camera if you want to separate them from the Taurids.
- Stay up after midnight to add the fast Leonids.