This just arrived in my in-box from my colleague -- and our assistant webmaster -- Adam Kapp. He wrote to say that:
The annual Perseid meteor shower is this weekend! (FYI) This year should be particularly good as there's a new moon, so the sky will be totally dark. At the peak you may see as many as a few per minute.
And here are some details from Adam's astronomer friend:
Meteor showers are best observed between the hours of Midnight and Sunrise, with 3-4 AM tending to be the peak. The best date will probably be Sunday, very early in the morning. You may see a few meteors before midnight, but if you really want to observe the shower, you'll have to go to a dark site and be awake during the wee hours.
To observe them, all you need are blankets to lay on and your eyes. No binoculars or telescopes are needed (they actually are counter-productive in this case. The show should be visible from everywhere in the world (at the appropriate time) however there tend to be peaks in numbers at certain times that are rather hard to predict. The reason that the shower is not time dependant is that the best time is when the side of the Earth you're on is flying directly into the meteoroids, which are the hours before sunrise.
3 Comments:
So, was anyone up at 3 this morning watching the meteor shower? How was it?
My friend & I were awake & prone between 1:30 - 4:30. We counted 75 meteors, though faint ones in our peripheral vision, as well as fireflies, made the count both challenging & rather ambiguous.(we won't forget the mosquito repellent next time!) An ideal locale WAY outside city lights was scouted out ahead of time. This extra effort was well worth it. We recommend making the most of these opportunities, for it was "out of this world"! flnative2
cool, thanks for the report. I made the effort a few years ago and it was indeed worthwhile.
out of curiosity, where were you?
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