Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight

oxide7 writes "August's Perseid meteor shower has historically been providing the best opportunity for enthusiasts to catch meteor shows, but this year the Internet will let casual observers enjoy the show live online. The Perseids have been observed for at least 2,000 years and are associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 133 years. Each year in August, the Earth passes through a cloud of the comet's debris. These bits of ice and dust — most more than 1,000 years old — burn up in the Earth's atmosphere."

Comments

We've just got

[rossdee]

a regular shower (rain, a little hail) and some thunder.

And the forecast is for mostly cloudy, so I don't think I will be seeing any meteors

Moon

[Anonymous Coward]

The moon is going to be out and high in the sky tonight, drowning out most of the meteors. The best showers are when there's no moon out. This one is probably going to be pretty boring because of it, don't expect much.

Perseids stick around a few weeks

[billstewart]

While the best viewing would normally have been tonight or a few days around it, the Perseids hang around for a while, and you may be able to see occasional meteors for a while. I saw one just by chance last night, in spite of the moon, streetlights, the marine-layer haze in the Bay Area. You'll need more patience in a week, but the moon won't be as much of a problem.

What's more frustrating has been not knowing if the auroras from the recent solar flares would be visible down here (which is very rare), and it's been cloudy enough near the horizon at night that I probably couldn't tell anyway. (There was some green glow in the distance the other night, but then it turned in to yellow glow, and red, and green again, so it probably wasn't auroras :-)

Re:I saw a strange one years ago

[Roachie]

Wow, 3 minutes for a drug reference to pop up.

And they say pot makes you slow.