This is off Sky and Telescope's website.

Jack Drummond of the Starfire Optical Range predicts that debris shed by the comet many years ago (long before the 1995 breakup) could bring us a meteor shower on the night of May 22–23. He writes:

"The closest approach of [Fragment C's] orbit to the Earth, 0.04 astronomical unit, occurs on May 22 at 20:00 UT. Thus the maximum of the meteor shower would be on May 22 or May 23, with a radiant of right ascension 208° [13h 52m] and declination +30° [in Canes Venatici, 12° north-northwest of Arcturus], and a geocentric velocity of 13.5 km/sec, which is quite slow." Unlike with many meteor showers, this radiant is highest in the sky as early in the night as 11 p.m. daylight saving time — so the meteors would be visible any time from dusk to dawn.

If the shower does peak around 20:00 May 22 Universal Time, that would be during the evening of the 22nd for continental Europe, later at night for western Asia, and before dawn on the 23rd for Central and South Asia. But keep watch wherever you are; the shower, if any, could arrive many hours earlier or later than that.

http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/comets/article_1704_1.asp

To area radio and television stations:

This notice may be worth mentioning to everyone who would listen. Meteor showers such as this do sometimes happen and if this one does occur, I'd like to hear about it. Please mention this if you get a chance to either your friends and neighbors, or to your listeners. Tell them how to contact me, preferrably by email at caretaker@aoas.org, or by phone at 479-474-4740. I'd like to know if this shower happens, and there's a chance there could be a significant outbreak of meteors. Example: 1946, the comet Giacobinni-Zinner produced a shower that for one single night produced an outbreak of an estimated 5,000 per HOUR fall-rate of meteors. That happened right over the central US and I personally know at least one person who witnessed that event.

Will it happen....I only can say that I HOPE it does. IF IT DOES, ask folks to let me and the media know about it so that they might alert their listeners and many more of us get a chance to see something rare and spectacular!

Thanks everyone

Bob

After several short trips outside to try and detect any meteors this evening, I've given up with a cloud pattern over Coleman Observatory that has moved in between 12:30 and 1:00am. Maybe, if there's any activity at all, someone will let me know about it from some distance away.

For anyone who hasn't already seen it, there's a neat little video of Fragment B passing through a starfield on the APOD for May 23. Even though it takes quite a while for me to see it with dial-up, an ethernet connection or DSL woud give an almost immediate view of the 83 frames in the loop. It's pretty cool and you should check it out!

Maybe the predictions for a really spectacular storm in 2022 on May 31st will actually come to fruition. Between now and then, there are enough people now making great studies of numerous meteor showers and storms that we should know whether it will, or will NOT happen on that distant evening. There may be excellent opportunities for at least a few short outbreaks in activity between now and then, too. The 5.33 year orbital period of 73P may bring us these opportunities on that timespan. It's amazing what can be predicted from careful studies of meteor streams and filaments cast off from both current and long forgotten comets. It'll be interesting to see just how all this will play out between 2006 and 2022 and beyond.

Bob

I went out a little before 10pm and stayed until after midnight. I shot a total of 84 exposures at 30 sec each and did not capture a single meteor. I did see a total of 3 meteors but none of them were from the region predicted for this shower. After I came back inside, I reread the emails from S&T. I had failed to read the second paragraph.

The first paragraph mentioned "11pm daylight savings time" and that was as far as I got. The second paragraph said the peak was at at 20:00 GMT, which would have actually made it 3pm here! 11pm was for Europe.

Okay, my bad, read the ENTIRE email. Anyway, skies were great until just after midnight. Enjoyed the stars anyway!

Fred
Charleston, AR

Hi'ya, Fred.

I know the message was trying to say that the expected peak wasn't for our area, but I went ahead and posted it anyway due to the final sentence urging everyone, everywhere, to look just in case the estimates were wrong by several hours either way. I had that same problem you did after midnight when the clouds moved in.

Oh, well. I know there's little chance for seeing anything spectacular from 73P as far as meteor showers or storms goes for this particular year, but I wanted to let everyone know about it so at least a few people might actually try to see something. I'm glad that both you and Roy C. took it seriously enough to have made the effort with me.

Maybe their estimates of a major storm in 2022 will turn out to be right and we'll get a treat something like the great Leonid storms of past decades.

Later
Bob

Oh well, I never really caught the 11pm Europe sentence.

I stayed up until like 1:30am working on a leaf collection, but I did venture outside for a little bit, the sky was a little hazy, but I didn't see anything.