[meteorite-list] Perseid Meteors to Peak August 11-13, 2005

Fri Aug 5 13:15:52 EDT 2005

Sky & Telescope
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Contact:
Alan MacRobert, Senior Editor
617-864-7360 x151

Marcy McCreary, VP Mktg. & Business Dev.
617-864-7360 x143

Press Release: August 4, 2005

Note to Editors/Producers: This release is accompanied by 
publication-quality illustrations and broadcast-quality animations; see 
details below.

Perseid Meteors to Peak August 11-13, 2005

The Perseid meteor shower, an annual celestial event beloved by millions 
of skywatchers around the world, returns to the night sky this coming 
week.

Sky & Telescope magazine predicts that the Perseid shower will reach its 
peak late on Thursday and Friday nights, August 11-12 and 12-13 (for 
viewers in North America). The rate of activity should pick up after 
midnight until the first light of dawn.

An observer under a dark sky might see more than 60 Perseids per hour 
between midnight and dawn. The first-quarter Moon sets by about midnight 
on these dates, so moonlight will not interfere.

You'll need no equipment but your eyes. The darker your sky, the better -- 
any artificial light pollution in your sky will reduce the number of 
meteors visible. But even if you live in an urban or suburban area, you 
have a good chance of seeing at least some meteors.

Find a dark spot with a wide-open view of the sky. Bring a reclining lawn 
chair and a sleeping bag; the bag not only provides warmth against the 
late-night chill but also serves as mosquito armor in this era of West 
Nile virus. Cover your remaining exposed parts (including hair and 
clothing) with an effective mosquito repellent.

"Go out after about 11 or midnight or so, lie back, and gaze up at the 
stars," says Sky & Telescope senior editor Alan MacRobert. "Relax, be 
patient, and let your eyes adapt to the dark. With a little luck you'll 
see a 'shooting star' at least every few minutes on average."

Perseids can appear anywhere and everywhere in the sky. So the best 
direction to watch is wherever your sky is darkest, probably straight up. 
Faint Perseids appear as tiny, quick streaks. Occasional brighter ones may 
sail across the heavens for several seconds and leave a brief train of 
glowing smoke.

If you trace each meteor's direction of flight backward far enough across 
the sky, you'll find that this imaginary line crosses a spot in the 
constellation Perseus, near Cassiopeia. This is the shower's radiant, the 
perspective point from which all the Perseids would appear to come if you 
could see them approaching from the far distance. The radiant is low in 
the north-northeast before midnight and rises higher in the northeast 
during the early-morning hours.

Don't give up if it's cloudy on the peak nights. The shower lasts for 
about two weeks, with good rates in the predawn hours of August 10th 
through 15th. (The radiant is always low or below the horizon for Southern 
Hemisphere countries like Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa; 
therefore few if any Perseids can ever be seen from these regions.)

The Perseid meteoroids are tiny, sand- to pea-size bits of rocky debris 
that were shed long ago by Comet Swift-Tuttle. This comet, like others, is 
slowly disintegrating as it orbits the Sun. Over the centuries, its 
crumbly remains have spread all along its 130-year orbit to form a sparse 
"river of rubble" hundreds of millions of miles long.

Earth's own path around the Sun carries us through this stream of 
particles every mid-August. The particles, or meteoroids, are traveling 37 
miles per second with respect to Earth at the place where we encounter 
them. So when one of them strikes the upper atmosphere (about 50 to 80 
miles up), it creates a quick, white-hot streak of superheated air.

For several years in the early 1990s the Perseids performed spectacularly, 
flaring with outbursts of up to hundreds of meteors visible per hour. The 
rubble streams responsible for these outbursts were probably shed during 
Comet Swift-Tuttle's swing by the Sun in 1862. In recent years, though, 
the shower has returned to normal.

More about the Perseids and how to watch them -- including how to make a 
scientific meteor count and where to report it -- appears in the August 
2005 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine and online in the articles listed 
at the end of this press release.

Sky & Telescope is pleased to make several publication-quality 
illustrations and broadcast-quality animations available to the news 
media. Permission is granted for one-time, nonexclusive use in print and 
broadcast media, as long as appropriate credits (as noted in each caption) 
are included. Web publication must include a link to SkyandTelescope.com .

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Helen Spence Federer, the original editors of Sky & Telescope magazine. 
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