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Perseid Meteor Shower This Week

Posted by michael on from the star-gazing dept.

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."

3 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. Re:seconds per meteor by Ayaress · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:Actual shower times? by Ayaress · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Re:Actual shower times? by Chuck1318 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.