Taurid Meteor Shower Set to Bring Swarm of Halloween Fireballs This Year

The annual Taurid meteor shower, sometimes known as the Halloween fireballs, may be a Taurid swarm this year.

Every three to seven years, the Taurid shower is more active than usual. The last Taurid swarm was in 2015, making 2022 a prime candidate for higher numbers of meteors showering down to Earth.

The Taurids are a meteor shower seen between September 10 and November 20 every year, peaking in mid to late October. In 2022, the peak meteor activity is due on November 5. The shower is so-called because the meteors appear to be coming from the Taurus constellation.

Mark Gallaway, an astronomer and science educator at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, told Newsweek: "Meteors are, normally, small particles of dust and grit floating in the solar system. As they enter the Earth's atmosphere at typical speeds of 44 miles a second, they heat up by friction.

"They also heat the atmosphere, so much so that it makes the path they follow glow," Gallaway added. "It is this glow you see, as the meteor disintegrates, at something like 30 to 59 miles up. Larger objects, say the size of a pebble, will produce a bright meteor known as a fireball."

The Taurids are two overlapping showers, with the meteors coming from two different sources.

Sara Webb, an astrophysicist at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, told Newsweek: "The comet responsible for the southern Taurids is called Encke. The northern Taurids are from the remnants of an asteroid named 2004 TG, which we think might have broken off Encke at some point.

"They happen at the same time each year as the Earth moves around the sun and through the debris trails left behind by the different objects."

Christopher J. Conselice, a professor of extragalactic astronomy at the University of Manchester, England, told Newsweek: "Over the course of a year, the Earth travels in its orbit and around late October to December, [this] crosses the orbit of the debris left over from the destruction of the material that is gravitationally removed from comet Encke by interactions with other objects in our solar system.

"When we cross this material, some of it falls into the Earth and goes through our atmosphere, which we see at the meteor shower."

The reason that 2022 may have an increased number of fireballs is due to the Taurid swarm, which occurs around every seven years.

"Within the stream of debris that makes up the Taurid meteor shower, there is a region where more debris (and more of the large debris) is concentrated together, essentially like a long sausage-shaped (or javelin-shaped) clump of debris in space," Jonti Horner, an astrophysics professor at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, told Newsweek.

"As that debris moves around the sun, it sometimes reaches the point at which it crosses Earth's orbit at around the same time the Earth is there. As a result, we run into some of that debris, so that's what a 'swarm year' is.

"The result is that the Taurids display more activity than normal (i.e. the number of meteors we see per hour is somewhat higher than usual), and the number of bright fireballs also seems to increase."

According to Horner, the returns of the Taurid swarm can now be predicted, to some degree, as scientists have worked out where the center of that swarm is, and can predict each year how close we might come to it. They can also tell whether it will pass the crossing point ahead or behind the Earth, arriving early or late.

David Asher and other astronomers at the University of Cambridge in England maintain a table of potential swarm years, from which we can see that the Earth is arriving at the crossing point after the center of the swarm has gone past.

Horner said: "We're getting there just under two months after the center of the swarm swung across our orbit - which actually means we've got a good potential to see enhanced rates this year (i.e. for it to be a swarm year).

"The sausage/javelin of debris is fairly long, so we'll still run through it, even though we're well away from the very center.

"Interestingly, we'll have an encounter with the swarm in 2032 (ten years' time), when we're hitting the crossing point at almost the same time as the center of the swarm, so that's one to look out for," Horner said.

Horner said that while nothing is ever certain when it comes to meteor showers, it is likely that the Taurids will be a bit more active than normal this year, and that we may see enhanced numbers of bright fireballs, too.

"So definitely something to look out for in the sky in the couple of weeks to come, despite the increasing interference from moonlight through that time," he said.

Correction 11/8/22: This article was updated to state Mark Gallaway works at Royal Greenwich Observatory.