The Eta Carinids are a
meteor shower
A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extre ...
lasting from January 14 to 27 each year, peaking on January 21. C. S. Nilsson of the Adelaide Observatory discovered them in 1961 in Australia. Roughly two to three meteors occur per hour at its maximum.
It gets its name from the
radiant which is close to the stellar system
Eta Carinae
Eta Carinae (η Carinae, abbreviated to η Car), formerly known as Eta Argus, is a stellar system containing at least two stars with a combined luminosity greater than five million times that of the Sun, located around distant in t ...
.
References
Meteor showers
January events
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