Perseid Meteor Shower - This Week!

Spend 10 minutes looking up after dark this week, and chances are that you will see the bright light of a meteor streaking across the sky. The Perseid meteor shower peaks on Wednesday night, but all week you have pretty good chances of seeing a few "shooting stars". So what's going on and how can you watch? Continue reading below.

Perseid meteor streaks across the sky near the Milky Way. Image Credit: Wikipedia Commons

 What is a meteor shower? 

Meteor showers happen when the Earth passes through the path of a comet. The Perseid shower is the result of Earth moving through the trail left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle. What we think of as shooting stars are really tiny bits of dust left behind by the comet. As the Earth passes through the dust trail, they hit the atmosphere at incredible speeds. The dust grains rapidly compress the air in front of them causing it to heat up and glow. This is the light that we see streaking across the sky. 

Image Credit: My friend Peter Detterline at Night Sky Notebook. Check out his cool blog!

When and how to watch:

To watch the meteors, it is best to get out of city lights. Find a safe, dark viewing spot and look up! Although the peak of the meteor shower is on Thursday at about 1 AM, viewing will probably be best in the hours before dawn, when the constellation of Perseus is highest in the sky. The Perseids are so named because they originate from the area of the sky that Perseus the Hero is in (see chart below) but you can see them all over the sky.  

Perseus is high in the sky just before dawn this week. Image Credit: Me and Stellarium

This is an especially good year to watch the Perseids, because the Moon is new on August 14, so its light will not wash out the meteors. If you watch in the predawn hours, you can expect to see 50 to 100 meteors per hour! 

If you watch in the early morning, you will have a chance to see Autumn and Winter constellations. Look a the chart above to see where you can find Orion, Pegasus, Andromeda, Taurus, and of course, Perseus! 

Good luck watching the meteor shower this week! I am going to try my luck with some astrophotography. If I capture any good shots I will share them here! Remember you can always learn about what is going on in the night sky and current space news by visiting the Dome Planetarium at the Peoria Riverfront Museum. 

Join us to learn all about Pluto and enjoy pizza and beer!