Witness the Spectacular Perseid Meteor Shower this Weekend – Here’s How to See It!
Are you familiar with the phenomenon of meteor showers? If not, now is your chance to witness one, and it happens to be the most spectacular one of all – the Perseid meteor shower. The peak of its brightness will occur on August 12. According to NASA, meteors are space rocks that enter Earth’s atmosphere, becoming extremely hot due to the friction caused by the air. The luminous streak we observe is not the rock itself, but rather the heated air surrounding it. When numerous space rocks simultaneously enter Earth’s atmosphere, it is referred to as a meteor shower. These meteors are small, swift, and radiant, leaving behind trails of light and vibrant colors as they traverse through the Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrate.
The Perseid meteor shower is at its busiest on the night of August 12, when Earth passes through the dusty remnants left by Comet Swift-Tuttle. The Perseid meteor shower is often considered the best of them all because it has the most shooting stars and the weather is usually nice in late summer for ideal viewing.
Unlike last year, when the full moon made it difficult to see the meteors, this year the moon is smaller in the shape of a crescent, so even the fainter stars are visible. You can see about 50-100 meteors per hour.
How many Perseids do you see?
According to Bill Cooke, director of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, Americans can reasonably expect to see about 40 Perseids in an hour just before dawn on peak evenings. That’s about one every couple of minutes, which isn’t bad. “We are, however, that you are in the country, away from cities and suburbs,” he added. Clearer skies in the suburbs will drop prices considerably, with 10 or less expected per hour.
For the best view of the Perseid meteor shower, head to the northern hemisphere. Enjoy the show by looking for a clear, dark sky and be patient. Meteors can be seen all over the sky, so you don’t have to focus on any particular direction. Sometimes you can start seeing meteors from this shower as early as 10pm.
About the Perseid meteor shower
The Perseids are special because they often create fireballs. Fireballs are large bursts of light and color that last longer than a regular shooting star. This happens because fireballs come from larger chunks of material. They are also brighter and more visible.
Meteors come from fragments of comets and parts of broken asteroids. When comets approach the Sun, they leave behind dusty trails. Earth takes these paths every year, and that’s when the pieces hit our atmosphere.
The Perseid meteor shower comes from debris from a comet called 109P/Swift-Tuttle. This comet takes 133 years to orbit the Sun. In 1865, Giovanni Schiaparelli realized that this comet caused the Perseids. Comet Swift-Tuttle last came close to our inner solar system in 1992. Comet Swift-Tuttle was discovered by Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle in 1862. It is a large comet with a nucleus 16 miles (26 kilometers) wide. (This is almost twice the size of the object believed to have caused the end of the dinosaurs.)
When the Perseids interrupted the launch of the space shuttle
In 1993, the launch of NASA’s STS-51 space shuttle Discovery was delayed due to the expected strong activity of the Perseid meteor shower. There were fears that the large amount of meteor debris during the shower could pose a risk to spacecraft in Earth orbit, leading to the decision to postpone the launch.
