Meteor Shower to Light Up Sky
The Boötids often go unnoticed, but they periodically light up the night sky with dozens of meteors per hour.
Wednesady night's forecasted clear skies could permit us a glimpse of one of the night sky's more camera-shy annual attractions: the Boötids meteor shower. The Boötids are so named because they appear to emanate from near the constellation Boötes, the herdsman. Most years, they are a pretty low-key affair, with only a few visible meteors per hour. Every now and then, though, they can really knock your socks off. That's what happened in both 1998 and 2004, when the Boötids erupted at a rate of 50-100 visible meteors per hour. Prior to that, they hadn't flared up since the 1920s. Astronomers still don't know precisely why the rate of the Boötids varies so wildly. Like the other annual meteor showers, the Boötids are a result of the Earth's …
