The pi Puppids are a

meteor shower A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at ext ...

associated with the

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that warms and begins to release gases when passing close to the Sun, a process called outgassing. This produces an extended, gravitationally unbound atmosphere or Coma (cometary), coma surrounding ...

26P/Grigg-Skjellerup. The meteoroid streams approach the Sun at around 37 km/s and have to overtake Earth that is orbiting the Sun at 30 km/s, resulting in

atmospheric entry Atmospheric entry (sometimes listed as Vimpact or Ventry) is the movement of an object from outer space into and through the gases of an atmosphere of a planet, dwarf planet, or natural satellite. Atmospheric entry may be ''uncontrolled entr ...

at a relatively slow 15 km/s. The

meteor A meteor, known colloquially as a shooting star, is a glowing streak of a small body (usually meteoroid) going through Earth's atmosphere, after being heated to incandescence by collisions with air molecules in the upper atmosphere, creating a ...

stream is viewable around April 24 but only in years around the parent comet's

perihelion An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. The line of apsides (also called apse line, or major axis of the orbit) is the line connecting the two extreme values. Apsides perta ...

date, the next being in 2023. However, in 1999 the planet

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a Jupiter mass, mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined a ...

perturbed the comet's perihelion to beyond

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

's orbit, and it is uncertain how strong the shower will be in the future. The pi Puppids get their name because their radiant appears to lie in the

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The first constellati ...

Puppis Puppis ("poop deck, stern") is a constellation in the southern sky. It was originally part of the Former constellations, traditional constellation of Argo Navis (the ship of Jason and the Argonauts), which was divided into three parts, the other ...

, at around

right ascension Right ascension (abbreviated RA; symbol ) is the angular distance of a particular point measured eastward along the celestial equator from the Sun at the equinox (celestial coordinates), March equinox to the (hour circle of the) point in questio ...

112 degrees and

declination In astronomy, declination (abbreviated dec; symbol ''δ'') is one of the two angles that locate a point on the celestial sphere in the equatorial coordinate system, the other being hour angle. The declination angle is measured north (positive) or ...

−45 degrees. This made them only visible to southern observers. They were discovered in 1972 and have been observed about every 5 years - at each perihelion passage of the comet - but often at very low rates per hour.

2019

With a large

error bar Error bars are graphical representations of the variability of data and used on graphs to indicate the error or uncertainty in a reported measurement. They give a general idea of how precise a measurement is, or conversely, how far from the repor ...

, the Pi Puppids may have briefly reached a

Zenithal hourly rate In astronomy, the zenithal hourly rate (ZHR) of a meteor shower is the number of meteors a single observer would see in an hour of peak activity if the radiant was at the zenith, assuming the seeing conditions are perfect (when and where stars w ...

of around 380 on 17 April 2019.MeteorFlux 2.3
(Select Shower: PPU, uncheck "Use temporary database", select 2019 and click "Create graph") Comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup had come to

in October 2018.

References

External links

Observing and History of the Pi Puppids
April Meteor showers {{Meteor showers