Perseid Meteor Shower Set to Light Up the Night Sky this Weekend

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Published on Aug 7, 2018


The best meteor shower of the year peaks Aug. 11th-13th when Earth passes through a stream of debris from giant comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. NASA's network of all-sky meteor cameras is already picking up strong activity over the USA, counting 86 Perseid fireballs during the four day period Aug. 4th-7th. http://spaceweather.com/ The Perseids are often the most impressive Meteor Shower of the year for the Northern Hemisphere. The Perseids offers a consistently high rate of meteors every year and it occurs in August when the temperatures are usually nice enough for a night under the stars! Each July and August the Earth encounters debris left behind from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. This comet has an orbit of 133 years and last entered the inner solar system in 1992. Even though the comet now lies in the outer portions of the solar system, far away from Earth, we still encounter debris that has been left behind during the many trips this comet has made through the solar system. https://www.amsmeteors.org/2018/08/vi... How to watch 2018’s Perseid meteors http://earthsky.org/?p=2087 Perseid Meteor Shower 2018: When, Where & How to See It This Week https://www.space.com/41394-perseid-m... Perseids Meteor Shower 2018 https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy... Clips, images credit: NASA/JPL Music credit: YouTube Audio Library Blue Macaw - Quincas Moreira

Moonless nights ahead for the Perseids

By Guy Ottewell in Astronomy Essentials | August 8, 2018
It’ll be a great year for the annual Perseid meteor shower. Don’t miss this preview by Guy Ottewell, which has the best charts you’ll find anywhere online.



View larger. | Meteors in the annual Perseid shower radiate from a point in the constellation Perseus the Hero. Chart via Guy Ottewell.
Originally published at Guy Ottewell’s blog, and reprinted here with permission.
This is an early notice: the best showing of the 2018 Perseid meteors should be in the night between August 12 and 13 (Sunday-Monday), but you may already have a chance to see a few of them.
They are members of a vast diffuse stream in space, millions of miles wide. That is why outliers can pass by Earth as early as the middle of July, and a few may continue till near the end of August. It is their peak, the densest part of the stream, through which we will pass in the night of August 12/13.
The scene shown is in the earlier part of that night, and it’s not too different in earlier nights. But in no night are you really likely to see so many “shooting stars” simultaneously! Even in the core of the stream, the little bits of matter are thousands of miles apart.
The radiant, or point from which the meteors in their parallel courses appear to streak, is at first over the northeastern horizon, then swings higher as the sky rotates, and is highest in the pre-dawn hours; and it’s then that more meteors are likely to be seen.
The meteors (or meteoroids, as they are called when still out in space, before becoming visible by burning up in our atmosphere) are particles shed from Comet Swift-Tuttle, so they follow roughly in its orbit.

The parent comet of the Perseids – Comet Swift-Tuttle – takes about 130 years to orbit the sun once. We see the meteor shower when Earth intersects the comet’s orbit each year, and debris left behind in its orbit enters our atmosphere. Chart via Guy Ottewell.
The comet was discovered in 1862 and has a period of about 130 years, so it has only once been seen since, in 1992. (But comets recorded from 69 B.C. and 188 and 1737 A.D. have been identified with it, leading to more accurate and fascinating information about its orbit.) It is a chunk of rock and ice 26 kilometers wide, and passes close to Earth’s orbit; it won’t hit us, though it will come within a million miles – an astronomical hairsbreadth – in 3044.
Because the orbit descends steeply from the north, the radiant point (or small area) is as far north as declination 48°, at the northern end of the constellation Perseus, near a wonderful deep-sky object, the Double Cluster of stars, between Perseus and Cassiopeia.

The radiant point of the Perseid meteor shower is near a famous deep-sky object, called the Double Cluster in Perseus. Chart via Guy Ottewell.
Actually, as with other meteor showers, the radiant’s position evolves over the years, and drifts eastward from day to day (as shown by the dots) during the shower’s duration, so that it is moving into another constellation, Camelopardalis, the Giraffe.
The Perseids have long been known as the most reliable of the year’s half-dozen major showers (though rivalled by the Geminids of December). And this year is favorable. Moonglare drowns all but the brightest meteors; but the sky is free of it, because the moon is new on August 11.

Earth in space, encountering the Perseid meteors in 2018. This graphic – via Guy Ottewell – is described more fully in the paragraphs below.
The globe picture shows Earth from the north of the ecliptic plane (the broad arrow is Earth’s travel in that plane in 3 minutes). As America rotates into night, it sees Perseids coming from low in the northeast; later, toward dawn, they are coming from high overhead.
The dotted line represents only a thread of the vast stream: meteors are coming from exactly overhead – at the moment depicted on the graphic above – in Russia.
The Perseids meet Earth from high ahead, so they are swift, needlng the atmosphere at 59 kilometers a second (132,000 miles per hour) – not as swift as the 71-km/sec (159,000-mph) Leonids of November, which meet us from almost level ahead.
Relaxing in a deck chair, gazing calmly half-upward, with peripheral attention all around, and noting streaks in any part of the sky that point away from the radiant – if they streak in other directions, they are sporadics, or Delta Aquariids, not Perseids – you may in the small hours of Monday be lucky enough to count 50 or even 100 in an hour. The Perseids’ estimated zenithal hourly rate is 110. But this means the number a single observer could record if the radiant is overhead (which it isn’t except for one place at a time at latitude 48° north) and if sky conditions are perfect.
Which, I hope for you, they will be.
Bottom line: A preview of the 2018 Perseid meteor shower, from Guy Ottewell.

Thanks to: http://earthsky.org

Start watching for Perseids now

By Bruce McClure and Deborah Byrd in Astronomy Essentials | August 7, 2018
Peak mornings – August 11, 12 and 13 – are moon-free. With only a slim waning moon up before dawn this week, start watching in a dark sky now.



Eliot Herman in Tucson, Arizona, captured this early Perseid on August 4, 2018. Nikon D810 camera and a 8 mm Sigma fisheye @ 15 sec, ISO 3200.
No matter where you live worldwide, the 2018 Perseid meteor shower will probably produce the greatest number of meteors on the mornings of August 11, 12 and 13. In a dark, moonless sky, this annual shower often produces some 50 meteors per hour … often many more. And this year, in 2018, there’ll be no moonlight to ruin the show.
It’ll be an awesome year to watch the Perseids!
In the Northern Hemisphere, we rank the August Perseids as an all-time favorite meteor shower of every year. For us, this major shower takes place during the lazy, hazy days of summer, when many families are on vacation. And what could be more luxurious than taking a siesta in the heat of the day and watching this summertime classic in the relative coolness of night?
People tend to focus on the peak mornings of the shower and that’s entirely appropriate. But meteors in annual showers – which come from streams of debris left behind in space by comets – typically last weeks, not days. Perseid meteors have been streaking across our skies since around July 17. We’ll see Perseids for 10 days or so after the peak mornings on August 11, 12 and 13. What’s more, the Perseids tend to build up gradually, yet fall off rapidly. So it’s possible to catch Perseid meteors now.

Perseid meteor on the morning of August 12, 2017, from Hrvoje Crnjak in Šibenik, Croatia. Notice the variations in brightness and color throughout, and the little “pop” of brightness toward the bottom. A brightness “pop” like that comes from a clump of vaporizing debris. Thank you, Hrvoje! Click for more 2017 Perseids.
When and how should I watch the Perseid meteor shower in 2018? The best time to watch most meteor showers is between midnight and dawn, and the Perseids are no exception. The best mornings are probably August 11, 12 and 13. The best skies are those far from city lights.
At this writing (August 7, 2018), the moon is a waning crescent up before dawn, in the peak Perseid hours. It might interfere some with your view of any early Perseids that happen to be flying, but it won’t interfere much, and might even enhance your enjoyment of the early morning sky. Plus a crescent moon is easy to blot out by sitting in the shadow of a tree or building. And, as the days leading up to new moon pass, the moon will be rising closer and closer to the time of sunrise. New moon will be August 11.
So don’t think you have to wait until the peak mornings to see any meteors. If you have a dark sky, start watching now!
Also remember, the the Delta Aquariid meteor shower is still rambling along steadily. You’ll see mostly Perseids but also a few Delta Aquariids in the mix.
No matter how many meteors you see, you might see something, and it might be a lot of fun.

Composite of 12 images acquired on August 13, 2017, by Felix Zai in Toronto. He wrote: “Perseid meteor shower gave a good show even though the moonlight drowned out most of the fainter ones. A huge fireball was captured in this photo.” Thanks, Felix! By the way, it’s only in a meteor “storm” that you’d see this many meteors at once. Even in a rich shower, you typically see only 1 or 2 meteors at a time. Click for more 2017 Perseids.
Don’t rule out early evenings, either. In a typical year, although the meteor numbers increase after midnight, the Perseid meteors still start to fly at mid-to-late evening from northerly latitudes. South of the equator, the Perseids start to streak the sky around midnight. If fortune smiles upon you, the evening hours might offer you an earthgrazer – a looooong, slow, colorful meteor traveling horizontally across the evening sky. Earthgrazer meteors are rare but memorable. Perseid earthgrazers appear before midnight, when the radiant point of the shower is close to the horizon.

From mid-northern latitudes, the constellation Perseus, the stars Capella and Aldebaran, and the Pleiades cluster light up the northeast sky in the wee hours after midnight on August nights. The meteors radiate from Perseus.

Here’s a cool binocular object to look for while you’re watching the meteors. The constellation Cassiopeia points out the famous Double Cluster in northern tip of the constellation Perseus. Plus, the Double Cluster nearly marks the radiant of the Perseid meteor shower. Photo by Flickr user madmiked.
General rules for Perseid-watching. No special equipment, or knowledge of the constellations, needed.
Find a dark, open sky to enjoy the show. An open sky is essential because these meteors fly across the sky in many different directions and in front of numerous constellations.
Give yourself at least an hour of observing time, for the meteors in meteor showers come in spurts and are interspersed with lulls. Remember, your eyes can take as long as 20 minutes to adapt to the darkness of night. So don’t rush the process.
Know that the meteors all come from a single point in the sky. If you trace the paths of the Perseid meteors backwards, you’d find they all come from a point in front of the constellation Perseus. Don’t worry about which stars are Perseus. Just enjoying knowing and observing that they all come from one place on the sky’s dome.
Enjoy the comfort of a reclining lawn chair. Bring along some other things you might enjoy also, like a thermos filled with a hot drink.
Remember … all good things come to those who wait. Meteors are part of nature. There’s no way to predict exactly how many you’ll see on any given night. Find a good spot, watch, wait.
You’ll see some.

Earth encounters debris from comet, via Astro Bob.
What’s the source of the Perseid meteor shower? Every year, from around July 17 to August 24, our planet Earth crosses the orbital path of Comet Swift-Tuttle, the parent of the Perseid meteor shower. Debris from this comet litters the comet’s orbit, but we don’t really get into the thick of the comet rubble until after the first week of August. The bits and pieces from Comet Swift-Tuttle slam into the Earth’s upper atmosphere at some 130,000 miles (210,000 km) per hour, lighting up the nighttime with fast-moving Perseid meteors.
If our planet happens to pass through an unusually dense clump of meteoroids – comet rubble – we’ll see an elevated number of meteors. We can always hope!
Comet Swift-Tuttle has a very eccentric – oblong – orbit that takes this comet outside the orbit of Pluto when farthest from the sun, and inside the Earth’s orbit when closest to the sun. It orbits the sun in a period of about 133 years. Every time this comet passes through the inner solar system, the sun warms and softens up the ices in the comet, causing it to release fresh comet material into its orbital stream.
Comet Swift-Tuttle last reached perihelion – closest point to the sun – in December 1992 and will do so next in July 2126.

The radiant point for the Perseid meteor shower is in the constellation Perseus. But you don’t have to find a shower’s radiant point to see meteors. Instead, the meteors will be flying in all parts of the sky.
What is the radiant point for the Perseid meteor shower? If you trace all the Perseid meteors backward, they all seem to come from the constellation Perseus, near the famous Double Cluster. Hence, the meteor shower is named in the honor of the constellation Perseus the Hero.
However, this is a chance alignment of the meteor shower radiant with the constellation Perseus. The stars in Perseus are light-years distant while these meteors burn up about 100 kilometers (60 miles) above the Earth’s surface. If any meteor survives its fiery plunge to hit the ground intact, the remaining portion is called a meteorite. Few – if any – meteors in meteor showers become meteorites, however, because of the flimsy nature of comet debris. Most meteorites are the remains of asteroids.
In ancient Greek star lore, Perseus is the son of the god Zeus and the mortal Danae. It is said that the Perseid shower commemorates the time when Zeus visited Danae, the mother of Perseus, in a shower of gold.

Russ Adams caught these 2 meteors, traveling on parallel paths, on the morning of August 11, 2017. Click for more 2017 Perseids.
Bottom line: The 2018 Perseid meteor shower is expected to produce the most meteors in the predawn hours of August 11, 12, and 13. But with only a slim crescent moon up before dawn now, you can start looking for Perseid meteors now!
Everything you need to know: Delta Aquariid meteor shower

Thanks to: http://earthsky.org