The Areitids meteor shower can be seen over both the Northern and Southern skies around May 22nd but are most visible at the beginning of June.
First spotted in 1947, the meteor shower develops from two different interplanetary meteoroid streams. The running theory that has been circulated between astronomers is that the meteor shower are debris from a larger asteroid called 1566 Icarus.
Strangely enough, the shower is actually harder to spot at night. This is due to their trajectory and stream path being between constellations, Aries and Perseus where the light emitted from the stars is polluting the meteor’s visibility. The meteors are best spotted in the twilight hours before dawn, approximately 45 minutes before the sun.
Image: image shows the area of sky around the Arietid radiant (indicated by a red dot)
The Arietid meteoroids graze earth’s atmosphere at 39km/s. The meteor skims horizontally through the upper atmosphere near the horizon. The best meteors are slow and bright.
Certainly worth waking up for!
If you’re not keen on braving the winter weather so early in the morning, you could try listening to the asteroids instead. According to NASA, you can hear the meteors enter the Earth’s atmosphere creating whining radar echoes known as “radio shower”. The sound that you hear over the radio is of meteors burning up in the atmosphere.