You might want your eyes on the skies tonight. The Tau-Herculids meteor shower may be visible tonight, May 30th, over North America.

Scientists are not certain that this meteor shower will be visible. However, they are thinking there is a good chance for us to see something. Right now Earth is passing through an orbital trail of debris that was left by a nearby shattered comet.

The broken comet called 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann, or SW3 was broken into large fragments back in 1955. The comet will not reach this point in its orbit until August, but there the large fragments were ejected at greater than normal speeds. Fast enough that they might make it to Earth and we might get a meteor shower.

The big question is ‘Will Earth be moving through the thickest path of the debris field?’ If Earth does move through this part of the debris field then we have a chance of seeing thousands of tiny comet fragments shooting through space.

Tonight we will be seeing mostly clear skies over the Baton Rouge area. We cannot be certain that we will see anything, but if the meteor shower does occur then the perfect time to view it will be around midnight.

If you happen to catch a picture of the potential meteor shower be sure you send it in to weather@wbrz.com, we would love to show off your pictures.