Otago Museum director and astronomer Dr Ian Griffin was up early yesterday to watch the Dunedin sky being lit up by meteors from Halley's Comet.
In his latest Otago Daily Times Sky Watch column on Wednesday, Dr Griffin said the likely "finest meteor shower'' of the year was expected, for southern hemisphere viewers, before dawn this week.
He noted that today's new moon would make meteor viewing more difficult, but it would be preceded by the "dark of the moon'', a time of the month when the sky was free from moonlight.
It had been a "lovely, clear morning'' yesterday, and he had watched from 4.30am to 6am, and seen 15 to 20 meteors, some of them green, directly overhead.
This was not a huge meteor shower, but viewing conditions were good, he said.
Part of Dunedin's appeal was its good dark skies viewing, largely unaffected by the light pollution which made viewing more difficult in many other cities, he has said.
In his column, Dr Griffin explained that meteors were seen as bright streaks of light that resulted from tiny grains of dust, usually smaller than a pea, burning up in Earth's atmosphere.
Yesterday's meteor shower was a period of enhanced meteor activity, occurring when Earth crossed a comet's orbit, in this case Halley's Comet.
When meteors came from Halley's Comet, the resulting shower was called "the Eta Aquarids'', because they appeared to radiate from a part of the sky near the star Eta, in the constellation Aquarius, he said.
Dr Griffin chairs the Dunedin City Council's dark skies advisory panel, which aims to help the city take a smart approach to enhancing Dunedin's night skies, and reviews city projects that have a significant outside lighting component.
