Slim chance late
Sunday to catch one of the best sky shows of the year – Monday night should be
clear for the end of the show
By Will Collette
The annual August sky show put on by the Perseid meteor has
been mostly a wash-out for our area. At peak (tonight), skywatchers can see as
many as 100 meteors per hour, mostly dust left behind by the Comet Swift-Tuttle,
hitting the atmosphere at speeds around 60 kilometers per second.
The National
Weather Service forecast for tonight is a total wash-out for Charlestown –
potentially heavy rain and certainly thick cloud cover. However, there is a
slim chance of some clearing late Sunday, after midnight, when there may still
be a decent number of meteors to see in the trailing edge of the Perseid
shower. A few more will flash through the skies late Monday night when the
weather forecast is for a nice clear sky.
Last year, astronauts in the International Space Station
captured some Perseid strikes from above. See one of their photos (courtesy of
NASA) after the jump.
From NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day
Denizens of planet Earth watched last
year's Perseid meteor shower by looking up into the bright moonlit night sky. But this remarkable view captured on August 13, 2011 by astronaut Ron
Garan looks down on a Perseid meteor. From Garan's perspective onboard
the International Space Station orbiting at an altitude of about 380 kilometers, the Perseid
meteors streak below, swept up dust left
from comet Swift-Tuttle heated to incandescence. The glowing comet dust grains are traveling at about 60
kilometers per second through the denser atmosphere around 100
kilometers above Earth's surface. In this case, the foreshortened meteor flash
is right of frame center, below the curving limb of the Earth and a layer of
greenish airglow, just below bright star Arcturus.
Want to look up at this year's Perseid meteor shower? You're in luck. This weekend the shower should be near its peak,
with less interference from a waning crescent Moon rising a few hours before
the Sun. EDITOR'S NOTE: weather permitting