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Dark Nights for This Year's Perseids
Stargazers could see more than one meteor per minute in locations with very dark skies.
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This year the new moon of August comes on Sunday, the 12th, perfectly timed to bring dark, moonless nights around the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. Moreover, Earth should pass through the shower's richest part around 1AM ET on August 13th -- so North Americans and western Europeans should have the best seats in the house.
The Perseids are bits of space debris that were shed by Comet Swift-Tuttle in past centuries and remain traveling more or less along the comet's 130-year orbit around the sun. The particles range in size from sand grains to pebbles, and they have the consistency of dry dirt. As it orbits the sun, Earth passes through this thin "river of rubble" every year in mid-August. Each meteoroid rips into our upper atmosphere at 37 miles per second, creating an incandescent trail of shocked, ionized air. This hot trail, not the tiny meteoroid itself, is what you see.
Peter Casolino, Corbis
Stargazers could see more than one meteor per minute in locations with very dark skies.
Talk About It: Post a Message
Get Alerts
Alert Me to Skywatching Events
Learn More:
View Meteor Photos
Basics of Meteor Observing
Is It a Meteor, Meteoroid or Meteorite?
Online Telescope
Space News and Photos
This year the new moon of August comes on Sunday, the 12th, perfectly timed to bring dark, moonless nights around the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. Moreover, Earth should pass through the shower's richest part around 1AM ET on August 13th -- so North Americans and western Europeans should have the best seats in the house.
The Perseids are bits of space debris that were shed by Comet Swift-Tuttle in past centuries and remain traveling more or less along the comet's 130-year orbit around the sun. The particles range in size from sand grains to pebbles, and they have the consistency of dry dirt. As it orbits the sun, Earth passes through this thin "river of rubble" every year in mid-August. Each meteoroid rips into our upper atmosphere at 37 miles per second, creating an incandescent trail of shocked, ionized air. This hot trail, not the tiny meteoroid itself, is what you see.
Tried to unstick it and all I got was hot and bit by skeeters!!! Had to use the deadbolt. 