The Perseid meteor shower could be almost twice as flashy this year.
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“Meteor showers are notoriously fickle so you can never predict for sure the number you are going to see or how intense it will be, but the Perseids are usually fairly reliable”, he said.
This post has been seen 4 times. The picture above is a fireball I was lucky enough to photograph during the 2015 shower. It is a useful measure of a shower’s strength, but in real life, these flawless conditions hardly ever occur. In most years, though, the constellation of Leo the Lion whimpers rather than roars, producing about 10 to 15 meteors an hour, especially just before dawn this year.
Those 200 meteors per hour are known as the Zenithal Hourly Rate (ZHR). There have been some over-the-top reports recently about the strength of this meteor shower.
What is the Perseid meteor shower?
The Perseids happen each August as Earth passes through the stream of dust and debris left by the comet Swift-Tuttle. “However, not everything is perfectly aligned for this year’s Perseids”, wrote Ethan Siegel, a contributing writer for Forbes on astrophysics, space and the science of the Universe. Or maybe not: We’ll see.
The event can be seen over the next few weeks, but will peak on August 12 and 13 as Earth flies through the densest area of the particles.
You also have to consider that the main peak of the Perseids is happening during daylight hours in the United States. The problem is that 200 per hour is not at all what you will actually see.
As always, to view a meteor shower, you don’t need to face any particular direction. If you’re in skeeter country, don’t forget the DEET.
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October 20-21, Orionids: The glare of a waning gibbous moon in the early morning hours just before sunrise could intrude with the Orionids, which typically produce 10 to 20 meteors per hour. This is what you would see under ideal conditions: flawless vision, no light pollution, perfectly cloudless clear sky, no smog, no trees or buildings blocking your view, no moon and meteors coming from directly overhead. Whenever they come to know about the meteors, they take out their telescopes and focus them towards night sky. If you get any good pictures, please post them in the comments. Even the light of a gibbous (humpbacked) moon isnt expected to spoil the show, with the darker predawn hour offering the best viewing.
