Meteor Showers

Nick Davison writes: "This weekend promises another good meteor display with the Perseids expected to be falling at up to one a minute at around 6am PST Sunday morning. The big show of the year, however, is expected to be the Leonids that peak November 18th - they are expected to briefly peak at around 15,000/hour."

Comments

Saw them driving

[El_Nofx]

Driving home tonight I saw several shooting stars and meteors. It was quite a nice show . I knew there had to be something of a big meteor shower going on. Read ccn.com/space this morning and they had nothing on it. Must of been slacking. Leave it to /. to inform the masses. These are nothing compared to the Northern lights up here in North Dakota. What North Dakota? They have computers up there? YA WE DO, Running water and indoor plumbing too! (ok fine we tore down the outhouse last year)

Observe them before dawn...

[crisco]

...wherever you live. Although there may be a peak time around then, generally the best viewing is before dawn as that is when the night sky is rotated round to face the direction the earth is moving. With the leftover particles from the comet in an orbit crossing earth's, we hit them head on in the morning sky. The article says August 12th between 14 and 17 UT will be the peak, I'll let you correlate that to where you live.

Will this cause problems for the ISS?

[starseeker]

Will the International Space Station pass through this?

One of the problems with having such a large contained area in space is that it's that much easier to puncture it. Lots of small holes would be very bad, although I know the odds of that are slim to slimmer. Still, is there a plan in case this happens? I assume my usual "When in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout" wouldn't really cut it...