Known for its fast and bright meteors, the annual Perseid meteor shower could be one of the best potential meteor viewing opportunities this year.
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“Forecasters are predicting a Perseid outburst this year with double normal rates on the night of August 11-12”, said Bill Cooke with NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office in Huntsville, Alabama. This outburst may show up to 200 meteors per hour, which is double the usual rate.
The last Perseids outburst was in 2009. It’s because the Earth will collide with material coming from the ancient Comet Swift-Tuttle.
“Every Perseid meteor is a tiny piece of the comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun every 133 years”, officials said. That’s because Earth will pass through the center of the debris stream rather than the grazing encounter we experience in most years. Each swing through the inner solar system can leave trillions of small particles in its wake. These scattered specks of dust – a trail in the comet’s wake – are what flash as they enter the atmosphere at a mind-blowing 132,000 miles per hour and burn up.
Go outside between midnight and dawn overnight Thursday into Friday.
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. Meteors will appear all over the sky, so it’s best to lie down and look up high – taking in as much sky as possible. Increased activity also may be seen Friday night into early Saturday.
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There will also be a live broadcast of the Perseid meteor shower on NASA’s Ustream page overnight August 11 to 12 and August 12 to 13 beginning at 9 p.m.
