Perseid Meteor Shower This Week

fejikso writes "Space Daily and the BBC announce the coming of the annual Perseid meteor shower, and forecasters say it could be unusually good. The cosmic spectacle is produced by the debris left by the comet Swift-Tuttle. When the shower peaks, by August 12, sky watchers can expect to see dozens, possibly even hundreds, of meteors per hour."

Comments

Great...

[Ayaress]

And here in Michigan, the forcasts say not to expect clear sky until next week. The only time I can remember Michigan not having crappy weather during a major meteor shower was when I was in Florida - which of course, had crappy weather every night that week.

Re:Great...

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Same here on the foggy north coast of California. I'm beginning to think that the meteors actually generate the fog.

Re:Great...

[DustMagnet]

I've found Infrared Satellite images the best for predicting night time viewing in the near future.

I'm in the clear, but I'm too busy to skip sleep over this.

seconds per meteor

[slothman32]

I've always wondered why they measure it in meteors per hour. Why not seconds per meteor? I would rather know on average how long til the next one.
Hopefully it will be clear here. Western NY does seem to have clouds though. At least I got to the Venus' transit clearly.

Re:seconds per meteor

[Ayaress]

The article says "as many as 200 meteors per hour", so:

200 meteors/3600 seconds = 1 meteor/18 seconds

So roughly 18 seconds per meteor. The reason they use per hour is that with something so random, the time between any two is wildly variable, and you need a large sample to get accurate rates. Just some statistical ass-covering, I guess.

Re:seconds per meteor

[Wisgary]

Yeah, meteors don't exactly fall at a perfect rate, you could get 10 in 3 seconds and then don't get any for the next 5 minutes.

Re:seconds per meteor

[Akhen3sir]

It's likely to be because the standardised measurement for a meteor shower is the Zenithal Hourly Rate - ie, the number of meteors per hour you would expect to see if the radiant (the point in the sky where the meteors appear to be coming from) was directly overhead under ideal conditions.

Essentially, it's a calculation that takes into account height of the radiant above the horizon for a particular hour, and the average of the magnitude of the faintest stars you can see at your location while observing.

I think every recent reference I've seen to the Perseids quotes a rate of 200 per hour, but I remember that being quoted as the typical ZHR for the shower when I first started observing them in the mid-70s. Somewhere along the way, the ZHR concept has got lost in the media reporting.

In real life, expect to see one or two every few minutes, with an occasional flurry of several over the space of a few seconds if you've got proper dark skies and no moon.

Once in a while, there may be a really spectacular bolide (fireball) that's well worth the endless hours staring upwards wondering what all the fuss is about.

Hygene

[shfted!]

I imagine the Perseids are pretty darned smelly. Imagine the stink from only showering once per year!

Re:Hygene

[lowmagnet]

yes, but I hear they are darn good scientists.

Actual shower times?

[Ted Cabeen]

Does anybody have actual times for the estimated start and end of the shower? Both of these articles regurgitate the same "go out at 2am" bullshit with no timezone listed. Should I go out at 2am UTC, 2am EDT, 2am HST?

Re:Actual shower times?

[Ayaress]

The times are local time - wherever you are. The shower runs 24-7 for several days. Just go out at the darkest time of night and hope there aren't clouds.

Re:Actual shower times?

[Ted Cabeen]

Looking around more, it looks like 2am local is the time that the earth is heading directly into the cloud, so that's when they peak. Weird. Still, an idea of when they'll stop and start would have been nice.

Re:Actual shower times?

[Anonymous Coward]

that would be YOUR time zone... best light conditions. During meteor showers such as this you would see them 24/hours a day if not for daylight...

Re:Actual shower times?

[Chuck1318]

While the shower goes on for several days, the peak, when we go through a filament of material, is August 12, 09:20 UT (what used to be Greenwich time). With daylight savings time, that will be 2:20am here in California.

Re:Actual shower times?

[dbirchall]

They may have already "started" - I know I was seeing more shooting stars than usual a few days ago. Wednesday night should be best, though, and specifically early Thursday morning. I'm planning to watch the show from 9000' or so elevation. Anyone who wants to go along should get a ticket to ITO post haste. ;)

Re:Actual shower times?

[tod_miller]

UT has nothing to do with GMT, Universal Time is actually mesauring the distance travelled around the sun, and takes into account wobbles etc...

This is from my head though, there are two 'universal' times, one takes into account wobbles of the earth, the other doesn't, one is definite, the other has a day of a slightly different length each time.

So next time you are late to work, blame it on a meteor shower knocking your UT alarm clock off, and I guess you PHB will go cross eyed, and say something like:

"Huh, yeah, I had one like that, I bought the newer model.. erm..."

I'll be watching.

Re:Actual shower times?

[Chuck1318]

Well, from this website, you convert from UT to GMT by adding 0 hours. If there are technical niceties involved, they aren't relevant to the ordinary person.

Re:Actual shower times?

[tod_miller]

"you convert from UT to GMT by adding 0 hours."

This doesn't mean that UT is the timezone formerly known as GMT.

"If there are technical niceties involved, they aren't relevant to the ordinary person." ... :-)

Wishes of shooting stars

[sevenofnine]

Better start preparing a list of wishes for each of the shooting stars that we can be expecting here then :)

Big City

[eingram]

I live in a big metropolitan area (DFW), and two years ago during the Leonids, I had to drive about an hour and a half out to see them really well (there was also a full moon during the shower, which sucked). So I suggest if you're in a big city, head for the country.

This should be a pretty good show, though. While we won't have a new moon (different from full moon) on the 12th, it'll be damn close. Plus, in this area, the moon will be below the horizon until around 3:30am. I can't wait (and I'm sure I'll be a zombie at work the next day, too)!

"Unusually good" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I must have heard that for at least five years in a row now.

Gimme something bigger

[ttsalo]

Couple of years ago I saw a meteor that was big enough and close enough to see pieces breaking off it. (And it lit up the landscape too, for a second.) These tiny-streaks-in-the-sky just haven't been able to impress me much after that.

--

Re:Gimme something bigger

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably wan't a meteor then - it's fairly rare to see pieces breaking off a meteor. More likely it was some reentering debris. The key is usually the speed - debris usually has a much slower relative speed to the Earth (coming in from LEO vs interplanetary).

Re:Gimme something bigger

[Alsee]

Bah! You kids these days don't know nuthin! Why, when I was a kid I had a meteor come down and blow off my left foot. These tiny-streaks-in-the-sky and near-by-meteor-impacts just haven't been able to impress me much after that.

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They could be UFOs

[LeGarcia]

As in Tunguska at Google news
I cannot submit stories anymore. why?

Re:Life?? Not as impotant as

[Ayaress]

Well, if you consider a 50-year-old conspiracy theory news, I can't say I'm sorry.

NASA Fluxtimator

[Chuck1318]

The NASA website has a Fluxtimator that predicts the meteor flux (meteors per hour) for various cities around the world during the night of August 11-12. It will also work for the Leonid shower in November. It looks like the peak is fairly sharp, and drops off quickly thereafter.

Re:NASA Fluxtimator

[Chuck1318]

Taking another look, the shape of the curve has to do with the time during the night, with it dropping off at dawn. But if you change the date setting, you can see the meteor flux tonight is well above that of last night or tomorrow night.

Dark Sky Locator

[Chuck1318]

The International Dark-Sky Association has a locator for finding the places near your location in the US with least light pollution.

Re:Dark Sky Locator

[Alsee]

[Sarcasm]Well that website was a big help![/Sarcasm]

I live in the vicinity of New York City. The website gave me a single result for half-way-decent viewing conditions, specificly to take a stroll 59 miles straight out into the ocean.

Around here it's not considered "light pollution" until some idiot hits you in the face with highbeams.

I remember going on vacation and seeing the MilkyWay for the first time. That was cool.

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Hey, another local?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kozar

I'm in Fort Bragg (the original in California), and that dang Marine Layer is in today so it's gonna be nothing to see here tonight.

Whereabouts are you?

Re:Hey, another local?

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Eureka. Yes, the "marine layer" is so thick today, you could let off a nuke at 20,000 feet, and we'd never know. I'm old enough that I've actually seen the sun. My kids still think its a myth. Good to know there's someone else from the former Russian part of California hereabouts.