A recently discovered meteor shower that peaks just once every five years is expected to reach its crescendo this week. Known as the chi Cygnids, the rare shower has been slowly increasing in intensity since late August, leading to predictions that it could light up the sky between September 13 and 15.<\/p>\n
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Actually, that\u2019s probably a bit of an exaggeration, as this celestial debris field is far less dazzling than other famous meteor showers like the Perseids<\/a>. As well as being fairly faint, the chi Cygnids are also somewhat few and far between, with just one or two appearing per hour during the peak of activity.<\/p>\n \n Still, there\u2019s something undeniably special about catching a glimpse of a cosmic event that we didn\u2019t even know existed until a decade ago. First observed by SETI Institute and NASA astronomer Peter Jenniskens in 2015, the chi Cygnids were then spotted again in 2020, while retrospective data showed that they also appeared in 2010<\/a>.<\/p>\n A recent announcement from the SETI Institute documenting the detection of an uptick in chi Cygnid activity<\/a> on September 3 would therefore appear to confirm the shower\u2019s five-year periodicity \u2013 assuming the predicted peak later this month actually materializes.<\/p>\n And while all the signs suggest that this will indeed be the case, the fact that we still know so little about this rare spectacle introduces an element of doubt. For instance, we still haven\u2019t figured out which comet<\/a> is responsible for producing the debris that gives rise to the meteor shower whenever the Earth crosses its path.<\/p>\n