The Persied Meteor Shower

Hello again, fellow SkyWatchers.
One of the easiest, and occasionally most spectacular, night sky observing activities is observing meteors. On any clear night, if you lie down and look up at the sky you will eventually see one or more streaks of light moving quickly across the sky and then fading rapidly. If you have a wide visual horizon and a dark observing area away from city lights, you will see even more. These steaks of light are the result of particles of dust and/or ice impacting Earth's upper atmosphere at speeds of tens of thousands of miles per hour. The energy released heats the air and strips electrons off the atoms of the atmosphere creating a glowing plasma 6o + miles up and usually vaporizing the meteor. Most are only as large as a grain of sand, and are often the debris left from a comet that passed by Earth's orbit long ago.

When Earth passes through a part of space near where a comet passed, it encounters a stream of debris which results in a large number of visible meteors. This is called a meteor shower. Every year in August we pass through the debris stream from Comet Swift-Tuttle. The resulting meteor shower can be spectacular. Earth is currently passing through this debris stream, and the annual Persied meteor shower is now under way. The predicted peak is this Tuesday night, August 11/12. Unfortunately, the gibbous Moon will wash out the fainter meteors. But, we may pass through a particularly dense trail of debris left by the comet in 1610, which could produce as many as 200 meteors per hour some time after midnight.

Keep in mind that predicting meteor shower activity is notoriously difficult. But if you have clear skies you should see some, and Perseid meteors are often bright, seem to move fairly slowly, and sometimes leave glowing trails. The meteors can appear any place in the sky, but all the streaks will point back toward the constellation Perseus.

For more detailed information about this year's Perseid meteor shower:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/31jul_perseids2009.htm?list896164
or
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/090807-perseid-meteors.html
or
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/highlights/52204947.html .

and for more info on meteors in general,

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/meteors-ez.html.

So, here is just another reason to try looking up!

Steve