Rare Meteor Shower? Or Hoax?

A co-worker recently sent me the following picture and wondered if it was a hoax.

A hoax?

There's a tiny bit of truth in this statement, but overall it is a hoax.  The truth is that there is a meteor shower on October 20/21.  It's called the Orionids and happens ever year at this time of the year.  This meteor shower is the result of Earth passing through the tail of Halley's comet.  When Earth passes through a cometary tail, tiny bits of dust and debris enter our atmosphere and burn up, thus creating the streak of light we know as a meteor.

This will not be a rare meteor shower.  Meteor showers will vary in intensity from year to year.  This year's Orionids are expected to produce about 25 meteors per hour, which isn't bad, but I've seen better.  

So other than stating that there is a meteor shower on October 20/21, this picture message is a hoax.  This isn't a rare shower and it's nowhere near the most intense shower ever produced.  A rare intensity shower is a shower that is really a meteor storm, producing 1,000+ meteors per hour.  This has happened a couple of times in the last 200 years.  This year's shower is nowhere close to being rare.

This statement is also incorrect in saying that you can go out and see meteors until November 7.  Technically it's correct in that you can go out any night and stare long enough and eventually see 1 meteor.  But these aren't showers.  They're caused by a random piece of dust/debris that entered our atmosphere and burned up.  

After the Orionids on Oct 20/21 there are the South Taurids and North Taurids on Nov 4/5 and Nov 11/12 respectively.  Neither of these showers will amount to much.  The South Taurids are predicted to produce 7 meteors per hour.  On November 16/17 the Leonids occur.  They are usually a bummer, and are predicted to be so again this year.  Sometimes the Leonids produce great showers.  The best shower I've seen was the Leonids in November 2002 and even then there were probably only 50-60 meteors per hour.

So the moral of this story is be careful of what you read.  If it sounds too good to be true, it's probably a hoax.  The misspelling of "meteors" in the last sentence is another indication this is a hoax.  :-)

By all means go out and enjoy a meteor shower, just don't expect anything rare, because you'll only end up disappointed.  

For more on meteor showers, check out the following links:

http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/earthskys-meteor-shower-guide

http://www.spacedex.com/