The Earth’s inhabitants will see starfall and the biggest Sun at New Year holidays. At New Year’s Eve, Earth residents will be able to see the maximum activity of Quadrantida meteor shower, the biggest Sun of the year and the New Year parade of planets. This was announced December 27 by the head of the methodological department of the Moscow Planetarium astronomer Lyudmila Koshman.
As the specialist specified, the Quadrantida meteor shower will reach its peak activity on the night of January 4 – up to 120 meteors per hour are expected.
Conditions for observing meteors in 2022 are favorable
“Conditions for observing meteors in 2022 are favorable. A young moon will not interfere. The best time to observe will be from midnight until dawn, when the radiant will be as high as possible above the horizon,” said the astronomer.
Also, on January 4, the Earth will pass perihelion, the closest point of its orbit to the Sun, and will be at a minimum distance from it, so the celestial body will seem enormous.
“The disk of the celestial luminary will look 3% larger than at the beginning of July, when this distance (between the planets) is maximum,” the expert explained.
In addition, from late December until Christmas, Earth residents will also be able to see the New Year parade of planets, with the exception of Mars, which becomes visible in the morning, Koshman added.
On December 23, it was reported that a group of astronomers discovered at least 70 rogue planets in our galaxy, the largest finding among such bodies.
For their study, they used data from ground-based and space-based telescopes over the past 20 years. In total, the group found may contain up to 170 planets. The inaccuracy in the number of objects is due to the difficulty of determining the age of the studied region and the lack of accurate data on the mass of the discovered objects.
