best time to see perseids
“It’s the Perseid meteor shower and it happens every year around the middle of August,” explains Mitzi Adams, an astronomer at the NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center. [1]
This is the most famous of all meteor showers. [2]
Just as bugs tend to accumulate on the front windshield of a car, Perseids accumulate on the front windshield of Earth. [3]
When you look at a meteor shower, you see these burning rocks. [4]
Mars joins the Perseid meteor shower for a beautiful display on August 12th. [5]
It’s the annual Perseid meteor shower, which peaks on Aug. 11 and 12. [3]
For several years before and after its 1992 return, the Perseids were a far more prolific shower, appearing to produce brief outbursts of as many as several hundred meteors per hour, many of which were dazzlingly bright and spectacular. [6]
This meteor shower gets the name “Perseids” because it appears to radiate from the constellation Perseus. [2]
The legendary Perseid meteor shower will peak in the next few days. [7]
August 8, 2000 — This weekend our planet will pass through a stream of debris from periodic Comet Swift-Tuttle, sparking a flurry of shooting stars that will be most intense during the hours before dawn on Saturday morning, August 12th. [1]
For the Perseids, ‘prime time’ is the mornings of 12 and 13 August. [4]
Although the comet is nowhere near Earth, the comet’s wide tail does intersect Earth’s orbit. [5]
When a comet comes close to the Sun, the Sun’s heat melts some of the ice and the rocks that are frozen in the comet fall out. [4]
Computations of the orbit of the Perseids between 1864 and 1866 by G. V. Schiaparelli (Italy) revealed a very strong resemblance to periodic comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which had been discovered in 1862. [2]
Sky watchers outdoors at the right time can see colorful fireballs, occasional outbursts and, almost always, long hours of gracefully streaking meteors. [5]
Sources:
[1] The Perseid meteor shower peaks on August 12, 2000
[2] The Perseids
[3] NASA - The Perseids are Coming
[4] am’s Skies
[5] 2005 Perseid Meteor Shower
[6] SPACE.com — Viewer’s Guide: Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks Aug. 12
[7] The 2007 Peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower