Predictions had called for dozens, if not hundreds, of shooting stars every hour in the early morning of May 24th. Instead, the shower generated only five to ten visible meteors flying across the weekend skies. (Related: Watch New Meteor Shower Peak in the Sky and Online)
As with other established showers, the new meteors are named for the constellation from which they appear to radiate, the faint northern constellation Camelopardalis (the Giraffe) in this case. It resides near the North Star and is visible across the entire Northern Hemisphere.
For the shower’s expected peak, I camped out under my brightly lit suburban backyard in Montreal, Canada, and in the course of two hours saw only four meteors under partly cloudy skies.