Asteroids, Comets and Meteor Showers.

Back in the early seventies when astronomy was a fairly new hobby for me, it dawned on me that there were more people worried about getting your order right at your local drive thru restaurants than worried about Earth getting hit by a near Earth object. What are near Earth objects, neo's are meteors, and or asteroids comets that come within one astronomical unit of the Earth.

Back in the late seventies the movie "Meteor" was made starring Sean Connory, Carl Muldin, Brian Keith. Then in the nineties several more movies were made on the subject.
Public awareness has been raised by these movies and by Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 mashing into Jupiter, but in my opinion the most realistic disaster scene portrayed was in the movie "Deep Impact".

Back in May of 2006 I was at a NASA exhibit at Akron Fulton Airport. I cornered two NASA scientists, we were talking about meteorites. They told me "Most Meteor sizes range from about the size of your fist to a grain of sand and are harmless". And "When a meteor hits our atmosphere its like slamming into a 13 foot thick wall of hi grade concrete." If it survives that, you get a meteorite buried in the ground somewhere hopefully and not anything important. The best way to watch a meteor shower is with wide field binoculars.

Meteors and other objects can move with alaming speed. Anywhere from 6 miles a second to around 45 miles a second. I go to sleep at night thinking about the violence that occurs out in space. Exploding stars called supernova, potentially blowing their nearby planets and asteroid belts out into space like a breaking cue ball, sending them on a eternal flight across the universe at these amazing speeds, or until they hit something. It's a scary thought. But one that crosses many astronomers minds. I don't want to imagine what a mountain sized chunk of a neutron star would do to earth. But most likely it would plow through the earth like a knife going through warmed butter. Destroying the earth in the process. With it's mass it would likely keep on going.

Rest easy there is good news. There are several good agencies watching our sky, here are some links to them Nasa's Near Earth Object Program. and Ames Research Center..

NameDateIntensityDuration

QuadranridsJanuary 4th402.2 Days

LyridsApril 21st154 Days

Eta AquaridsMay 4th206 Days

Delta AquaridsJuly 28th2014 Days

PerseidsAugust 12th505 Days

OrionidsOctober 21th254 Days

South TauridsNovember 3rd15Unknown

LeonidsNovember 16th15Unknown

GeminidsDecember 16th505 Days

UrsidsDecember 22nd154 Days