Here is a meteor shot from the International Space Station during the Perseid shower in 2011 by Astronaut Ron Garan. NASA
Break out the blankets and the bug spray, because its Perseid time!
The Perseid meteor shower, one of the most consistent and active of the year, is set to peak Sunday night into Monday morning with about 50 to 60 meteors per hour.
I’ll talk more about the Perseid and what causes it in a moment, but first: The forecast.
Great! Well... good. Temperatures will be more like late September, with lows Sunday night at 74. The moon will be a waxing crescent and should set early, so it won’t be much of a factor late in the evening.
But, there is a chance of thunderstorms every day through Thursday on the current forecast. While that’s great news if you still need more rain (do you really need more rain?), the cloud cover may keep us from seeing Perseid in all its glory. Still, it’s worth a try. Saturday night and Sunday have the lowest chances for storms with the lowest forecasted cloud cover over the next several days.
The meteor shower itself started back in July, as the Earth came into the path of the Swift-Tuttle comet as it does every year at this time. The comet left a debris field of ice and dust and gravel. When the planet moves into that debris field, those particles enter the Earth’s atmosphere at approximately 100 kilometers per second and burn up. Ta da! Meteor.
The meteor shower gets its hard-to-pronounce name from the constellation from which the shower seems to radiate, Perseus. That is typically in the northeastern sky, but the meteors could be visible almost everywhere, well if the clouds go away.
The fantastic Slate blog Bad Astronomy has a wonderful handy-dandy guide to the shower this weekend
here.
When I’ve gone to escape the city lights to see the meteor shower, I usually head north or west due to the fewer trees and hills in that direction (Remember: Don’t trespass! That’ll get you shot!).
And take pictures if you can. Then send them to me at
jerry.wofford@tulsaworld.com. And share your experience on
Twitter with me this weekend!
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