The annual Perseid meteor shower peaks Thursday night and lasts through Friday morning.
Advertisement
Forecasters say there will be clear skies over Wales tonight as the Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak. The shower is visible from mid-July each year, with the peak in activity falling sometime in the period of August 9-14. Comet Swift-Tuttle has a 133-year orbit and every year between mid-July and late August, Earth crosses the comet’s orbital path and bits and pieces of comet hit Earth’s upper atmosphere.
“The meteors you’ll see this year are from comet flybys that occurred hundreds if not thousands of years ago”, Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office told Quartz. Their name derives from the fact that they appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus.
The weather should cooperate for star gazers across much of North Carolina. That will allow for double the normal rate of meteors.
For tens of millions in the USA and overseas, the annual cosmic show will likely be partly to mostly blotted out by light pollution and cloudiness.
If you miss Friday August 12, in the morning, there is always Friday into Saturday.although the shower activity won’t be as intense. One a year, the earth travels through the field of particles and the Perseid meteor shower ensues.
How can you see the meteor outburst? Scientists say Jupiter’s gravity occasionally pulls debris from Swift-Tuttle closer to Earth.
The meteor shower is best viewed away from city lights which will obscure all but the brightest meteors.
Here’s what you need to know.
NASA experts recommend spending 45 minutes in the dark beforehand so you can see the “shooting stars” better. It is when the debris burn up at the time of entering the Earth’s atmosphere that it emits light which is visible from the ground, reported Space.com.
Advertisement
The best time to take in the meteor shower is between midnight and 1 a.m. Friday after the moon sets.
