The Perseids, one of the best-known and most spectacular annual meteor showers, peaks this year between 12-13 August.
The best times to view from the UK will be in the early morning hours of Thursday 12th and Friday 13 August, between about midnight and dawn. Weather permitting, viewing conditions should be ideal this year with the recent new Moon (10 August). At the maximum there could be over 80 meteors per hour.
The Perseids is a bright meteor shower associated with comet
Swift-Tuttle. As the Earth’s orbit passes through
that of the comet, tiny dust particles in the comet’s wake are swept up
by the Earth, entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 215,000 km/h and burning up. This produces the effect that we see as ‘shooting stars’ – meteors.
Perseid
meteors can be seen during late July and early August, falling off rapidly after a peak
around 12 August. It’s thought that the shower as a whole may be about 160,000 years old but the majority of what we can see is 5000 years old.
The ‘radiant’ of the shower (the point from which meteors appear to emanate) is the constellation Perseus, hence the name. The meteors can appear in any part of the sky, but the best place to look is usually about 1-2 handspans from the radiant, quite high in the northeastern sky.
In
clear weather, you should be able to spot a meteor every few minutes or
so. Most appear as flashes of light lasting less than a second, but
some may be more dramatic and leave more persistent trails. NB your eyes will take about 20 minutes to adapt to the dark. You’ll need to scan the sky for the
random flashes so it’s best not to use a telescope.
You can share your observations online via the Twitter Meteorwatch project – see http://meteorwatch.org/ for details.
Meteor showers are never completely predictable, and last year there was a second peak nearly a day after the main one.
More information about this meteor shower can be found in the Royal Observatory’s Perseids fact file.
No comments.