Look up tomorrow! Perseid meteor shower peaks this weekend
The long-awaited Perseid meteor shower will peak on Saturday with 150 meteors streaking through our skies an hour.
The shower happens every August as the Earth passes through debris from the Comet Swift Tuttle.
However, this year’s moon – which will be three-quarters full – might wash out many of the fainter shooting stars.
Nasa has warned that this will not be the ‘brightest shower in recorded human history’ as many have hoped – but it’s still definitely worth a look.
The Perseid meteor shower occurs each year between 17 July and 24 August, peaking between 9 – 13 August.
The best time to watch them will be this Saturday night.
Meteor showers occur when a comet comes close to the sun and produces debris – meteoroids – that spread around the comet’s orbit.
During the Perseid meteors, debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle bursts into the Earth’s upper atmosphere at around 130,000 miles (210,000 km) per hour.
Since meteoroids that create a meteor shower all move on a parallel path, and at the same speed, they seem to originate from a single point in the sky to observers on Earth, known as the radiant.
Contrary to certain claims, the meteoroids will not be visible during the day. However, there may be a chance to catch them during dawn or dusk.
‘We wish this were true… but no such thing is going to happen’, said Bill Cooke, head of Nasa’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Centre.
‘For one thing, the Perseids never reach storm levels (thousands of meteors per hour).
At best, they outburst from a normal rate [of] between 80-100 meteors per hour to a few hundred per hour,’ said Mr Cooke wrote in a blog post.
The best Perseid performance occurred in 1993 when there were over 300 meteors per hour during its peak.
Last year there were more than 200 meteors per hour.
‘This year, we are expecting enhanced rates of about 150 per hour or so, but the increased number will be cancelled out by the bright Moon, the light of which will wash out the fainter Perseids’, Dr Cooke said.
‘A meteor every couple of minutes is good, and certainly worth going outside to look, but it is hardly the ‘brightest shower in human history.’
Meteor showers are usually named after the constellation that their radiant lies in.
For example, the Perseids meteor shower gets its name because it appears to radiate from the constellation Perseus.
Read more at Daily Mail
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