Perseid Meteor Pleasure
It’s the best meteor shower of this year for many reasons. First, the Perseids are one of the year's best showers. In the dark countryside, you may see 60 to 100 meteors or “shooting stars” an hour. On top of that, the warm August nights make viewing the Perseids a true pleasure. As with any good show, you have the will to give up some sleep, but I guarantee it’ll be worth it.
The Perseid meteor shower has been going pretty well for the last week, but it peaks this coming Sunday night into Monday morning, Aug. 11-12.
If it happens to be cloudy that night, the night of Aug. 12-13 should be almost as good. This year will be a fantastic spectacle because there won’t be much white-washing moonlight in the sky. Traveling away from city lights is well worth it to view and enjoy the Perseids from the darkest sky possible.
The Perseid meteor shower is one of several dozen annual meteor showers over Butler, but it’s undoubtedly one of the most prolific. Most meteor showers occur when the Earth, as it moves in its path around the sun, encounters debris trails left behind by comets. These comets, as they pass by the sun in their highly elongated orbits, release some of the dust and rocks trapped in their frozen cores. The ammunition for the Perseid meteor shower comes from Comet Swift-Tuttle, which swings by this part of the solar system every 133 years and made its last pass in 1992. Some heavier rocks are in the debris trail, but mostly, there are dust to gravel-sized pebbles that slam into Earth’s atmosphere at speeds up to over 40 miles a second.
When we see the streaks of light that make up the Perseids or any other meteors, we are witnessing a breathtaking display of nature's beauty. A tiny part of the light is caused by incineration due to air friction. Most of the light is caused by debris disrupting the atoms and molecules of the column of air they’re shooting through. Electrons are temporarily bounced away from the nuclei of atoms, and light is given off when that happens. That’s why you sometimes see the streaks take a few seconds to fade as the atmosphere gets its act back together.
You can stay up late tonight to see the Perseids, but you're better off catching some zzzs and getting up early in the morning. The best showing of any meteor shower is after midnight because, as you can see on the diagram, you’re on the side of the Earth, plowing in the Swift-Tuttle comet debris. It’s like driving in the countryside on a warm summer evening, where you always get more bugs on your front windshield than your rear. Similarly, you'll see more meteors in the direction of the Earth's movement than behind it.
The best way to watch the Perseids is to lay back in a reclining lawn chair or maybe even on a quilt on the ground and roll your eyes all around the skies. This meteor shower is called the Perseids because the meteors seem to originate from the constellation Perseus, the Hero in the mid to high east-northeastern skies. It would be a mistake to restrict your gazing to the northeast sky because you’re bound to miss many meteors. They will be visible in all the predawn sky, but their tails will point back in the general direction of the constellation Perseus in the northeast. Having a Perseid party with friends and family is a lot of fun. The more eyes you have in the skies, the more meteors you’ll see. Again, in the dark moonless skies, especially in the countryside, you may see up to 100 yards an hour. It’s worth losing some sleep over!
Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and adventurepublications.net. Contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.
