Aurigids meteors 4:30 AM PDT; a chance of a lifetime

You have one last chance tonight, in the next four hours and if viewing conditions are decent, to see the burst of a lifetime of "falling stars" from the Aurigids. The Aurigids are meteors, dust from somewhere near Auriga, the constellation often called "The Charioteer".

"Nor the strange huge meteor procession, dazzling and clear, shooting over our heads,..." Leaves of Grass, Year of Meteors, 1859 ’60 Walt Whitman

Update 3:20 AM PDT: One fast meteor through the clouds, NNE sky. Also, cool live meteor sounds update link at bottom.

If the skies are clear and you are somewhere on the Pacific coast of the United States and Canada, around 4:30 AM, Pacific Daylight Time, there is a possibility that you can see a meteor shower, maybe a meteor storm, a truly rare event. Perhaps five or six or more meteors a minute will chase across the Eastern sky, and hundreds, maybe thousands over the course of a short hour and half. This is truly a once in a lifetime sight to see.

Earth, this imperfect ellipsoid ship we're spinning on, is passing tonight through 2000 year-old dust from the comet Kiess, a debris trail last seen in detail from our traveling planet in 1911. The comet Kiess dropped this part of its cosmic trail of debris when gladiators still fought in the Coliseum, long before Christians were fed to the lions. According to meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute's Carl Sagan Center, "Only three people alive today are known to have seen this shower before in 1935, 1986, and 1994". Those sightings before were mere glimpses of the dust; tonight we may travel through a much larger field. As those rocks break the atmosphere, they will light up in a burst of color before dying in our atmospheric force field, around 50 to 80 miles above the earth's surface.

The colors could be different from other meteor showers like the recent annual Perseid shower that occurs around the second week of August each year.  These rocks should still have a "pristine" coating from the comet Kiess, a hobo orbiter that has seen the far reaches of our solar system. Kiess has been in the cold company of the Oort Cloud, a mix of comet misfits large and small that circulate unwillingly around the sun as a group and travel close to earth perhaps once in a million years.

"Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,    Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;       Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,    For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far." Abt Vogler Robert Browning

The pristine coating that Kiess sheds from its outer surface is composed of different and more virgin minerals than most comets that orbit our sun on a closer circuit. When meteors with this pristine coating fly through into the earth's atmosphere, the fire in the sky may be more white, less yellow – if we see it at all.

Because there is debate on what we will see, if we see it. Science is not certain how much remains of this debris field:

Meteor showers aren't as predictable as clockwork, even though Jenniskens hopes that will be true someday. This year's Aurigids could mark a meteoric boom - or a bummer of a bust. That's why Jenniskens and his colleagues are watching so closely to find out if the shower matches their predictions. The outcome could shed fresh light on how comets spark meteors in the first place, and what we can expect from future brushes with cosmic dust trails.
Catch A Falling Star

If it is as they speculate, and you have a clear enough sky, stay awake awhile longer. The sight will be worth a dark of the night trip outside, a gaze to the heavens. Our earth circles on a frantic round-about in the middle of a busy celestial freeway.

How about I meet you at the corner? I'll bring the stadium blanket, if you'll bring the wine...

"(A moment, a moment long, it sail’d its balls of unearthly light over our heads,   Then departed, dropt in the night, and was gone;)" Leaves of Grass, Year of Meteors, 1859 ’60 Walt Whitman

Sources:

Strange Lights: The 2007 Aurigid Meteor Shower

Aurigid meteor shower to peak Sept. 1  

Aurigid Shower Highlights

Comets in Distant Cloud May be Smaller Than Thought

Get your cameras ready for two meteor showers

Update: Listen to a meteor ping! Quite odd and somewhat addictive.

Radio Link:Echos of USAF (Formally NAVSPASUR) radar signals
reflected off of meteor trails received at Roswell, New Mexico

The Roswell link is more active than the Texas link tonight. Note: I had to start the media player twice to kick-start the live feed.

Imagine being in a WWII submarine, listening to sonar blips.