The annual Perseid meteor shower is returning to light up the sky with a shower of light and color, the Associated Press reported.
It has been active since July and reaches its maximum before dawn on Monday, August 12. It’s one of the brightest and easiest to observe “shooting stars”, during which sky-goers can see “an abundance of bright blue meteors”, notes astronomer Don Polacco of the University of Warwick.
According to the American Meteor Society, more than 50 “shooting stars” per hour are expected this year. The meteor shower continues until September 1.
Most meteor showers originate from cometary debris. The source of the Perseids is comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle.
A meteor shower is a light phenomenon caused by small particles that enter the Earth’s atmosphere. Most of them are no bigger than grains of sand. They are obtained from the destruction of comets, which gave rise to a bunch of meteor bodies – ice and dust particles rotating in their previous orbits.
The progenitor of the Perseids, first mentioned in Chinese chronicles in AD 36, was Comet Swift-Tuttle, discovered in 1862. The meteor shower got its name from the constellation Perseus, where its radiant (the apparent point from which appears).
The Perseids and their “bright fireballs” are easier to observe than many other meteor showers, notes NASA’s Bill Cook.
“Shooting stars” are usually most visible between midnight and pre-dawn. It’s easier to see shooting stars under a dark sky, away from city lights. The best view of the Perseids will be in the Northern Hemisphere.
Meteor showers are brightest on cloudless nights with a waning Moon.
According to NASA, the Perseids travel at a speed of about 60 kilometers per second, or 250 times faster than a jet plane. If a man could travel in a meteor from this stream, his flight from San Francisco to New York would take one minute instead of five hours by plane. When they reach the earth’s atmosphere at their incredible speed, these particles burn at temperatures between 3,000 and 10,000 degrees – about 10 times higher than that of volcanic lava.
The next big meteor shower is the Orionids, which will peak in mid-October.
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