The Perseid meteor shower is coming!
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Thursday night into early Friday, the annual Perseid (PUR’-see-ihd) meteor shower is expected to peak with double the normal number of meteors. The meteors will radiate from Perseus.
If the predictions by Maslov and Lyytinencometary hold, onlookers could witness as many as 100 meteors per hour. “These meteors are called Perseids because they seem to fly out of the constellation Perseus”. The last Perseid outburst occurred in 2009.
So when is the best time to watch?
So, where does the Perseid meteor shower come from and why will this year be more breathtaking than average?
The Perseids show up every year in August, when Earth ventures through trails of debris from an ancient comet.
To put the Perseid meteor shower outburst in sky watching perspective, the Eta Aquarids shower in May only boasted 10 or so meteors per hour. Indeed, the Perseids are all that’s left of the eons-old rocky space projectile, which is now nothing more than an icy, rocky plane of space debris that orbits around our collective star every 133 years or so.
NASA says Earth may be in for a closer encounter than usual this year.
Analysis by Russian astronomer Mikhail Maslov and Finnish astronomer Esko Lyytinencometary suggests a portion of the material tailing the comet Swift-Tuttle was recently shifted toward Earth by Jupiter’s gravitational field.
“The meteors you’ll see this year are from comet flybys that occurred hundreds if not thousands of years ago”, Cooke said. When these particles hit the Earth’s atmosphere, they burn up and we see the white glowing streaks in the night sky.
Best viewing will be from midnight to dawn on the morning of August 12th.
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How to prepare for viewing meteor showers: If you live anywhere near a major metropolitan city, drive to the nearest darkest place you can find, avoid looking at headlights or any lights at all for 30 – 45 minutes so your eyes can get adjusted to the darkness.
