Shower Time!

Hi! It's been a while since I've posted (if you're interested in my excuses, let me know.... No? Didn't think so!)

Anyway, nothing like a good meteor shower to bring me out of hibernation. The Perseids are set to peak tomorrow, so tonight, tomorrow morning, and tomorrow night might be good times to look for them. The weather around here is predicted to be pretty good, though maybe a bit hazy.

The radiant of the Perseid meteor shower (the point in the sky where the meteors appear to come from) is in Perseus*, and will rise in the northeast a bit before 11 pm both nights. Unfortunately, the moon also rises about the same time, and once the moon is up, it will make the fainter meteors hard to see. If you block the moon with your hand or a tree or a house, it may help.

Moonlight is not the only problem. Try to find a dark location, away from city lights, to watch for meteors. The darker the sky, the more meteors you will see, and the more spectacular they will look. Also when deciding on your watch location, consider the fact that you will be looking toward the northeast to see the shower. You don't want to go southwest of town, then turn around and look back toward the city lights to see the show!

Why do we get a meteor shower every year at about this time? Well, meteors are just objects from space hitting the earth's atmosphere and burning up brightly. Every year, on our trip around the sun, the earth passes through the orbit of comet Swift-Tuttle - the comet isn't there when we are there, but the debris it left behind from its tail is there, and that is the stuff that burns up in our atmosphere and gives us the show called the Perseid Meteor Shower.

Enjoy!

*_{I personally don't recognize the constellation Perseus, but I do recognize Cassiopeia, which is shaped like a W. The radiant will rise just below Cassiopeia.}