A Memorial Day Meteor Shower Is Happening On Monday! Will We See It in NJ?

You know what would be an awesome way to cap off a long holiday weekend? A spectacular meteor shower to help ring in the unofficial official beginning of summer!

According to NJ.com, astronomy experts are predicting a late-May Memorial Day meteor shower in the late-night hours of Memorial Day (May 30).

There's a catch to this though: As cool as it would be to see this spectacle in the sky from your backyard patio, or while you're on the beach, there's no guarantee that we'll be able to see much of it. Astronomy experts say that this meteor shower, called "Tau Herculids",  will either be an "all or nothing event."

What's the deciding factor?

Bill Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, says it will depend on the speed  of Comet SW3, a comet that has been zooming around the earth since the 1930s, and has been breaking apart into more and more fragments as time passes. Its falling debris is what makes up a meteor shower. The faster the comet travels, the faster the meteors fall. The faster the meteors fall, the more likely we are to see the meteor shower zipping through the sky like shooting stars.

This meteor shower could have the potential to be a meteor storm, which would be even more dazzling with meteors falling by the dozens in a burst of activity in the sky! So let's hope Comet SW3 steps on the gas!

When will it happen?

You'll need to stay up late for this one. The meteor shower will happen within a small time frame, but when it does happen, it'll look like stars shooting through the sky

In New Jersey, if it'll be visible, the peak viewing window will be from 12:30 a.m. (Monday, May 30) to 1:45 a.m. (Tuesday, May 31).