1. The Arietid meteor shower is the strongest daylight shower of the year. It lasts from late May until early July, and peaks in 2003 on June 8th.
2. Just before dawn on Sunday, June 8th visual observers might see one or two beautiful "Earthgrazing" Arietids streaking overhead from the east.
3. Arietid meteoroids hit Earth's atmosphere with a velocity of 39 km/s (87,000 mph).

Every year in early June thousands of meteors streak across the sky, but most are invisible because the Sun is above the horizon while the shower is most intense. These daylight meteors are called the Arietids. They stream from a radiant point in the constellation Aries, which lies just 30 degrees from the Sun in June. No one is sure where Arietid meteoroids come from, although some astronomers suspect they are debris from the sungrazing asteroid 1566 Icarus.

Right: "Hey Joe, what was that?" A fanciful view of a daylight Arietid fireball, by artist Duane Hilton. Bright sunlight renders most Arietids invisible.

The Arietid radiant rises in the east about 45 minutes before sunrise. That's true for observers in both of Earth's hemispheres (north and south). Sky watchers won't see many Arietid meteors, perhaps only one or two per hour before dawn, but the ones they do see will be remarkable. Pre-dawn Arietids tend to be "Earthgrazers"--meteors that skim horizontally through the upper atmosphere from radiants near the horizon. Spectacular Earthgrazers are usually slow and bright, streaking far across the sky.

Even if you don;t see any Arietids, it's still worth waking up early on June 8th. You can see brilliant Venus rising before the Sun over the eastern horizon less than 30 degrees from the Arietid radiant. The planet Mercury, dimmer than Venus but still bright, is nearby. Finally, turn south and you'll spot a bright red "star" high in the sky. That's the planet Mars.

Above: This image shows the area of sky around the Arietid radiant (indicated by a red dot) as seen from mid-northern latitudes at 4 a.m. on June 8, 2003.