(9:30PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
A Perseid Shower
This will be incredibly quick. Read this, back away from the keyboard, turn off all the lights (this works best in rural America), go outside and look up. Look up at the night sky. Be patient. Tonight, dharmaniacs, is the annual Perseid Meteor shower.
Space Daily (that title is not a joke) reports:
Mark your calendar: The 2008 Perseid meteor shower peaks on August 12th and it should be a good show. “The time to look is during the dark hours before dawn on Tuesday, August 12th,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
“There should be plenty of meteors–perhaps one or two every minute.”
The source of the shower is Comet Swift-Tuttle. Although the comet is far away, currently located beyond the orbit of Uranus, a trail of debris from the comet stretches all the way back to Earth. Crossing the trail in August, Earth will be pelted by specks of comet dust hitting the atmosphere at 132,000 mph.
At that speed, even a flimsy speck of dust makes a vivid streak of light when it disintegrates–a meteor! Because, Swift-Tuttle’s meteors streak out of the constellation Perseus, they are called “Perseids.”
(Note: In the narrative that follows, all times are local. For instance, 9:00 pm means 9:00 pm in your time zone, where you live. )
Serious meteor hunters will begin their watch early, on Monday evening, August 11th, around 9 pm when Perseus first rises in the northeast.
This is the time to look for Perseid Earthgrazers–meteors that approach from the horizon and skim the atmosphere overhead like a stone skipping across the surface of a pond.
“Earthgrazers are long, slow and colorful; they are among the most beautiful of meteors,” says Cooke. He cautions that an hour of watching may net only a few of these at most, but seeing even one can make the whole evening worthwhile.
The LA Times version, with times in PDT:
“The most eagerly anticipated event this week is the annual Perseid meteor shower – the summer’s finest. This year the shower’s maximum is expected during the dark hours between the evening of Monday, Aug. 11, and dawn of Tuesday, Aug. 12. The best time to watch is from moonset, at 1:57 a.m., until dawn, at 4:45 a.m. The number of meteors that you can see depends on the quality of your observing conditions, and the greatest number, between one and two per minute, are only expected from wilderness sites free of urban light pollution. The best way to watch is by reclining in a sleeping bag (and coat) on a deck chair. Aim your gaze high overhead, in the east or northeast direction. Perseids can appear anywhere in the sky, but seem to come from the direction of the constellation Perseus, the superhero.”
I know, I know. You have to go away from the screen, away from the keyboard, and then, of all impossible things, you have to look up. Sorry. They haven’t invented Perseids 2.0, the meteor that’s not outside and is on demand, but they’re working on it. Until then, the best show in town tonight is in the sky.
Enjoy. h/t to Americablog.
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Hey, I know you’re going to enjoy this.
Thanks for reading.
In the mid nineties I was living in a small town of about 4000 on the ocean. Almost no streetlights. Lots of very dark places at night. When this shower came every year I used to go to the darkest place on the beach outside of town I knew of to watch it. The sky was like a sheet of black velvet and there were no other lights except what was in the sky. And the meteors would draw long silent bright glowing lines trailing behind fireballs across that black velvet.
Takes your breath away….
Too much light pollution. (sigh) You can’t even see the Milky Way.
My sons have school tomorrow but want me to wake them around 2am…..enjoy
I used to really enjoy this meteor shower, but it’s been a couple of years since I’ve caught it – glad you reminded me!
Lots of lightning. Every single day for days on end. This may be common in the Midwest but here in Plymouth it’s what we call wee-ahd. Well, that’s what they call in Reveah just nohth of Boston.
As a surfer, I’ve been paying close attention to the summer weather along the NE coast since ’65. Usually we get a great view of the Perseids. For the winter night shows we get all goose-downed and lie on the deck with only facial skin exposed. Looks like this year is a little different. It’s been more fall-like the last week.
Just thinking – one of the nice things about the Perseids is they will still be there for the next sentient species that dominates the planet.
In the meantime, the lightning shows, while ephemeral, have been absolutely spectacular. Spent a half hour at the harbor tonight just watching them go off over the lower Cape. Guess that will be the sky show for tonight around here.
starting around 10 local time, we saw 1-2 within a minute, and we’re on the edge of a town and had moon up so hardly the best seeing.
Off to take another gander at 12:30 local time.
I had a hot date last night. I asked my 9 year old if he’d agree to a deal after our ice cream dessert. “Would you consider going to bed now, (before 9) if I got you up around 2 to watch the meteor shower tonight? I’ll go to bed now too!”
I got up around 1 to pre-fog the area for mosquitoes, set out blankets and pillows and woke him. He was a trooper. We saw about one every three minutes for the hour and a half we were out. Only 2 big ones, but it was tres’ cool.
I think we may do it again tonight, but my bad back informed me I must move the lounge chairs out there, hard damp lumpy ground is not a slipped disc’s friend.
The stars alone were magnificent.
I need to ask my next door neighbor if they would leave their porch light off for a night though. It made viewing much tougher.
We had great conversations about people around other stars laying, looking up at us, wondering whether or not we existed.
Kid’s eyes are so very cool.
Did you look up? If not, you really should. Beautiful.
I wish there wasn’t a city to our north east, that is the only other light pollution.