Perseid meteor shower set to dazzle
An image of a Perseid meteor taken during the 2009 shower. The meteor appears as a bright streak running from top centre to bottom right. The stars of the constellation of Cygnus and the Milky Way are visible on its left and the bright star Vega can be seen on its right
Credit: Pete Lawrence
This year’s Perseid meteor shower looks set to be one of the best of recent years, with near perfect viewing conditions for observers in the UK. The peak of the shower will be at around 2300 BST on Thursday 12 August but activity will be strong into the pre-dawn hours of Friday 13 August. This is just two days after New Moon, meaning that our celestial neighbour will not provide any natural light pollution to spoil the view.
With cloudless skies and in a dark viewing site, observers can expect to see between 60 and 100 shooting stars each hour over the night of the peak. Even in light polluted cities you will still see around ten an hour.
The meteors appear to originate from a point in the constellation of Perseus (hence the name Perseid) that will be rising in the northeast at the time of the shower. They are caused by particles burning up as they streak into Earth’s upper atmosphere at 135 000 miles per hour (216 000 kilometres per hour). The material comes from Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which last passed near the Sun in 1992. Enhanced activity accompanied that return and was evident for several years afterwards. The 2005 and 2007 returns of the shower proved fairly ‘normal’ whilst in 2008, there was a notable sharp spike in activity rising to in excess of 100 meteors per hour after the ‘normal’ maximum.
For more information please visit the Royal Astronomical Society website. (link opens in a new window)