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When the late show is over, turn off the TV, step outside and catch a late, late show in the night sky. It's prime time for the Perseids, arguably the most accessible meteor shower of the year.
"If you want comfort, this is the shower to see," said Bill Cooke, the head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.
Every night, Cooke has been turning on a couple of all-sky cameras in Alabama and Georgia to catch meteor trails as they streak through the sky. This year's been a great one for the Perseids, in large part because the moon doesn't glare in the sky when the show is getting good.
The absolute best viewing is expected Thursday night - actually, between midnight Thursday and dawn on Friday. Perseid meteors should be visible every night from now until next week. At its peak, observers could see at least one meteor every minute, Cooke told me. You just have to know where and when to look - and the experience goes much more smoothly if you make a few preparations.
First, some basic facts about meteors: As explained in our interactive graphic, meteor showers occur when our planet plows through a trail of space grit left behind by a comet. Those bits of grit zip through the upper atmosphere at speeds of more than 125,000 miles per hour, lighting up a trail of ionized air.
Don't worry: There's virtually no risk of being hit by one of these falling stars. Most of this grit burns up dozens of miles above us. A week ago, Cooke's camera in Alabama snapped a picture of a fireball lighting up the sky much more brightly than any planet - and even that sparkler self-destructed at an altitude of about 56 miles.
NASA
An all-sky camera captures a fireball streaking over Alabama on Aug. 3 during the Perseid meteor shower.
The Perseids are produced by trails of grit left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle during its 133-year orbit. Earth starts plowing through the Swift-Tuttle debris in late July, and the height of the shower comes annually around Aug. 12-13. The Perseids are so named because they appear to emanate from a point in the constellation Perseus, also known as a "radiant." Because the radiant is in northern skies, Northern Hemisphere observers are in a more favorable position to see the shower.
The strength of the shower varies from year to year, depending on what part of Swift-Tuttle's debris trail our planet moves through. Based on what he's seen so far, Cooke expects a "very good Perseid shower this year."
The good news is that Cooke is making himself available on Thursday to discuss the shower via this NASA chat page. He'll be taking questions during the afternoon, starting at 3 p.m. ET, and then he'll be back online from 11 p.m. ET to 5 a.m. ET Friday. The bad news is that all this Internet chatting will seriously cut into his own meteor-watching time.
"I'll be in the press room with no view of the sky," he said.
NASA
Perseid meteors appear to emanate from a point in the constellation Perseus, as shown in this graphic depicting the northeastern sky at around midnight. Although the meteors can appear in any part of the sky, their tails can be traced back to that point..
A couple of years ago, I put together a top-ten list of tips for maximizing your meteor-watching experience. Here's an updated game plan for making the most of the meteors, assembled with Cooke's help:
- Pick a viewing spot far away from city lights, where the skies are likely to be clear and wide-open. Higher elevations are usually better than lower elevations, and you don't want to be surrounded by trees, buildings or other obstacles to viewing.
- For help in site selection, you can check out the Clear Sky Chart website, which provides weather conditions for skywatching ... and links to popular viewing locations on a state-by-state basis. Your local astronomy club can also point you in the right direction. This year, some events for amateur astronomers are timed to take advantage of the Perseids - for example, star parties in California's Mojave Desert, in Michigan, in Oregon and Washington state.
- Bring a blanket or a chaise lounge to lie back on. Have layers of clothing available in case the air turns chilly at night. Bring snacks or drinks. Bring a flashlight so you can find your way through the dark. Bring a music player or radio if you need a diversion. And bring your friends. Meteor-watching sets a great mood for chatting about cosmic issues, or meditating on the wonders of the heavens.
- Don't give up too quickly. Give your eyes plenty of time to get accustomed to the dark. Although the meteors appear to emanate from the radiant in Perseus, don't focus exclusively on that point. "The closer the meteor is to the radiant, the shorter the trail is," Cooke explained. "I always tell people to look straight up, because that way, they'll catch plenty of meteors far enough from the radiant to see a trail."
- The later you can stay up, the better. "It's a late-night shower," Cooke said. You could start seeing Perseids at around 9:30 p.m., and those "Earth-grazers" tend to leave the longest, most impressive trails. But the show doesn't get good until after midnight, and the peak usually comes just before morning twilight begins.
- To get a better sense of what to expect at which time, use NASA's Fluxtimator. When you click in the right coordinates for meteor shower, date, location and viewing conditions, the Java-based calculator charts what the estimated meteor flux will be at different times.
- If you're totally clouded out, you can try listening to the meteors. NASA's Perseid Web page includes a video feed that shows what Cooke's cameras are seeing, accompanied by a soundtrack of radio blips created by the meteor streaks. Cooke said it's also possible to hear the radio blips by tuning your FM radio to a station so distant that all you can hear is the hiss of a carrier wave. "When a meteor passes, you'll hear a blip kind of like a sonar blip," Cooke said. Here's a spooky audio file that gives you an idea what the radio echoes sound like. SpaceWeather Radio also lets you hear the meteors, and you can always check out the Perseid Fireball Cam.
- The meteors aren't the only game in town: Saturn, Mars and Venus form a striking planetary triangle in western skies just after sunset, and the International Space Station is visible from many North American locations just before sunrise. Impress your friends by telling them that the bright star near the zenith at around 11 p.m. is Vega (made famous by the "Contact" movie). and that the bright "star" in the southeast is the planet Jupiter. If you're far enough north (or south), you might even see an aurora.
- If you want to share your meteor sightings with the world via Twitter - and find out where the sightings are sizzling - the MeteorWatch website is the place for you.
- Even if you miss the meteor shower completely, you can click through SpaceWeather.com's meteor gallery and catch up on the highlights. And you can start making plans for the Leonid meteor shower (peaking Nov. 17-18, unfortunately during a nearly full moon) as well as the Geminid meteor shower (peaking Dec. 13-14).
Cooke noted that December's Geminids are the equal of August's Perseids, based on the number of meteors you should be able to see. "But nobody likes to freeze their backside," he added. Which gets back to the comfort angle.
Whatever you do, don't obsess over how many meteors you're seeing (or not seeing) per hour. The Perseids are a good excuse to get outside in the summer, experience nature's wonders and then share those experiences. Last night, for example, I saw exactly one meteor from my viewing spot, a half-hour's drive outside Seattle. One meteor! But I also saw mountain vistas, a deer with magnificent antlers lurking by the side of a forest road, and the Milky Way in all its glory. Even setting aside the meteor, it was well worth the trip.
That's my experience. What's yours? Feel free to share your stories of skywatching adventures past and present in the comment space below.
More Perseid guides on the Web:
- Space.com: Meteor shower makes impressive start
- Astronomy magazine: Perseids light up summer sky
- Sky & Telescope: Perseid viewing conditions excellent!
- Universe Today: Join the world in watching
For more about the Perseids, check out this posting from last week. If you have some Perseid pictures that you're proud of, share them using our FirstPerson photo in-box. Join the Cosmic Log corps by signing up as my Facebook friend or hooking up on Twitter with @b0yle. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."
Leave a Comment:
Nothing like a good""" shower""" to brighten your day. lol
ironically itll be in the dark,lol
Does anyone know if meteors are magnetic? Because i think i might have a very small portion of one. i found it when i was digging one day. Its a huge rock that has a bunch of holes in it and it is magnetic. It looks like a meteor, but i'm not sure what it is. So if anyone has an answer please reply~ Have a great day :P
Almost all meteors are magnetic as most of them are made out of iron and nickel. If you found a dark rock that looks very odd compared to everything around it and it's magnetic, there's a really good chance you've got a space rock.
If you can stay up to see the Perseid meteor showers, do so. In January of 2004, I convinced my husband to finally look at one. We stood in the window together and he said it was really beautiful. He died later that year in October. I was always glad we got to watch that together one time. Check it out, it is really beautiful.
The pieces of meteorite I've seen are magnetic.
Ashlie, you are right that many meteorites are metalic, made of nickel and iron and have weak magnetic properties. However, most meteors are not made of nickel and iron. If we look only at meteorites that are seen to fall, most are so called stony metorites. That said, most that are identified as meteorites are nickel-iron simply because they are more noticable.
I was not sure exactly what an all sky camera was, so I hit up a search engine. Fisheye lens. The search engines show a bunch of online all sky cams so for those interested it might be cool to bring up several cameras on several monitors and watch the sky show happen in multiple locations, thanks for reminding us of the clear sky charts, as usual I can expect clouds for the peak time. Last year I sat outside with a digital camera in my hand, that did not work at all. The streaks are to short lived for a manual trakker. As I gather it, the best thing to do is point your observing equipment (on a tripod or steady surface) and leave it there while you record what it sees on laptop or wifi connection to a (insert your nomenclature for a large drive array here). I bet there are professionals with telephotos who can capture the streaks on the fly, and I bet they are few and far between as well. Good luck!!...think I will be listning for them oh HF and VHF...my square is in fm19 in case you hear my call.
Many years ago I was standing outside of the Bright Angel Lodge at the Grand Canyon. It was very late at night and thus very quiet. We heard it before we saw it! A "huge" meteorite that seemed to move horizontally across the sky. I would never have believed you could HEAR a meteorite. It sounded like a hot fireplace poker plunged into a bucket of water. Or something like that.
Saw one last night while taking out the garbage. The rock traveled nearly the whole sky. What was really cool was I could see it bouncing along. It didn't just go in a straight line, but instead waved up and down some over the 4 or 5 seconds that I saw it going by.
By far the best one I ever saw was back in 93 when I was watching with my puppy love girlfriend at the time. We saw one that must have been pretty darn big. It went across the whole sky that time too. Instead of being just a streak though, it looked like one of those sparkler sticks you buy on the 4th of July.
I love Watching meteors I used to film them on my carema every chance I got. One time I went to the mountains to film the shooting stars and I hit a dear in the road. That deer's head today has been located on a plaque above my fireplace. That incident was one of the most memorable moment and my one of my proudest achievements . Does anybody want to go fishing this weekend in Big Bear with me?
Not if your driving!!!
where is big bear?
Yes I do, what time are you leaving?
In 2006 about this tiime of year, one night I was outside my trailer and as I turned to go into the house I saw a flaming "basketball" size meteor. I was surprised that I could not hear it, because it looked so close, I thought it was going to hit my neighbor's three story house. Well, it kept going and I assume it hit Florida bay or the Everglades. I saw the flames, and it looked like the image of the Miami Heat logo of a flaming basketball. I'll never forget it. Just wish I could have followed it to see where it landed and what it looked like. Because I could not hear it, it must have been a lot larger and higher up than I thought.
The sounds I heard about 15 years ago were the neighborhood children, oohhing and aahhing in most of the back yards as they watched the meteor shower.
Sa-weet. Perfect recipe- me, my honey, a blanket under the stars... should I take my alarm clock out there? Probably!
Cool, guess I'll crawl from under the trees, drag the canoe down to the lake and "see the show"
I'm lucky I can go out in my backyard to see it. Clear Arizona sky next to the Gila River Indian Reservation. No street lights for a mile or so. And definitely don't need a blanket this time of year! All I hear though are the coyotes howling and they'll probably be quiet without a moon to howl at.
your living my dream. are there wolves arizona.
A Vail of hope and a Vail of pain, in the light they both looked the same.
pour them out on into the world, on every boy and every girl.
Take the poison of your age, don't lick your fingers when you turn the page.
What I know is what you know is right, in the city it's the only light
it's the neon bible, neon bible
not much chance for survival, if the neon beble is right.
One of the best memories I have from my childhood is of the summer night in 1952 when my mother, my three year old brother and I spent several hours on an old quilt in the front yard of our home in Kingsport, TN watching this wondrous occurrence. That was 58 years ago and it is as vivid to my mind as if it were last night. Parents: Give your children the gift of this experience. They'll love it as much a we did!
we're hoping to see the show tonite from abingdon,va hope it is like the one you saw from k-port 58 yrs ago! we've seen quite a few over the last few days, but hope tonite the weather be kind to us!
A wonderful story. I will do the same with my grandchidren so they can relate the story in 60 years.
I saw about 10 last night from my back yard (Texas)..2 with nice long tails..Approx 3:30-4:30 AM
I live in Lake Havasu & can sit out in my front yard and see it all! We have no street lights and a few years ago I watched the meteor shower and I'd say I saw at least two a minute, it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. As for the weather we don't have to worry about blankets, it gets down to about 85 at night!
Hey Tammy your right about last night! I was out late watching the sky! I love it we live on the south side of Lake Havasu! I watch all the other things in the night sky too! Its really pretty Im glad we dont have the street lights! Enjoy!
I still think bush and cheney should be tried for treason.
Mike, you are still stuck on stupid !!!!!!!
what does Bush and Cheney have to do with meteors? get a steady job, pay taxes on a regular basis and you'll be changing your mind about who to try for treason...
MSGT-USAF RETIRED-lol--that was funny!!!!! lol "stuck on stupid" lol--so funny!!! lol especially considering the subject of the article!!!
and you tried for stupidity,moron
I agree with you Mike. Bush & Cheney, those dummies are both, bout as the stupidest 2 individuals I have ever seen. LOL !!! Especially, Bush. Cheney he just like to keep up bull. He need to go sit down some where....Ugh. Ooh my bad, someone's gonna say "what does that have to do with meteors", with they dumb self to. LOL!!
about the only thing in your reply that is in proper English grammer and spelling was my quotation...are you trying to speak and write pig latin or ebonics?
you spelled grammar wrong
I think you and everyone that thinks like you should jump off the nearest, highest bridge!
Hilarious!!
There you go, ruining some nice stories with political bulls&*t. Why don't you take a long walk on a short pier and keep walking.
mikex are u 11yrs old? i hope ur not a voter
Yes Mike! If it were not for the fact that he has a robotic heart Cheney would be wearing a orange prison jumpsuit!!!!
For so many years now, I've set my alarm clock for late at night, woke my son, carried blankets and pillows (and hot chocolate in winter) to lay back in the yard and just watch the sky. What wonderful experiences we've had on those late nights. I was lucky enough to see on grazer last night from my back patio. We'll be out and about again and everytime we know there are showers to come.
Good luck to every one watching the show, ive tried for years to see it and the event is allways ruined by cloud cover!
can i see it form costa mesa california????
This event is visible from everywhere on Earth unless obscured by cloud cover. The 'peak' happens when Perseus is over the NW Pacific Ocean; if you live up there, you may see a meteor every 45 seconds instead of the 60-second interval typical for this shower.
what time will it begin?
Just wondering if we will be able to see this in Oklahoma???
This event is visible from everywhere on Earth unless obscured by cloud cover. The 'peak' happens when Perseus is over the NW Pacific Ocean; if you live up there, you may see a meteor every 45 seconds instead of the 60-second interval typical for this shower.
Watched them from outside Vegas in 2001. It was mine and my fiance's first date. I was hooked (both on stargazing and him). Now we live in Colorado at 8500 feet. What a great anniversary present.
Meteors don't make a sound, exactly, but they can seem to be "audible." When I saw/heard a huge one several years ago, one that seemed to hover for several seconds and lit up the entire valley where I live as bright as a lightning bolt; I researched the question of audibility because of course sound travels so much slower than light, the idea of "hearing" the fireball travelling some 60 miles up in the atmosphere and perhaps a hundred miles or more away . . . was perplexing . . . but I KNEW I heard it.
Long and short of it is the melting plasma trail creates a "crease" in the earth's magnetic field and then the field collapses behind the travelling meteor creating an electro-magnetic pulse that travels to the ground at the speed of light and "rattles" anything vulnerable to its frequency which is said to be between 20 to 100,000 Hz. . . . like dry leaves, the glassess on one's head, . . . anything vulnerable to that slight energy pulsation. I actually "felt" this on the hairs of my arms, too!
It's like being zapped by a slight electrical charge. But the sound is gorgeous if you're surrounded by trees and brush . . . as I was. True nature's surround sound from space!
Clouded out once again in New Jersey....always happens when there's a shower.
Same here. I live in Jersey too. I was excited for days about the meteor shower and of course not able to see it.
We live 40 miles north of Washington, DC. Approx 3 weeks ago in Maryland between 8 and 9 pm I saw a bright bright neon green and sparkly extra bright white ball with a tail in the northeast sky and it looked low. It streaked from right to left in an arc coming down to the ground. If I hold out my arm with a quarter in my fingers, the ball looked a little larger than the quarter. It seemed large, close and spectacular! Then about two weeks ago my husband and I both saw another green streak but not as large or close....much smaller. We live in rural area with no lights around and we are in the middle of 36 acres with lots of glass in our living room. I sit right next to the window and we were watching tv with low lights on. I've never seen anything green before. It was quite an event for me! What was it?
About 35 years ago we lived on a farm at least 12 miles from the nearest small town. My daughter, son, and I got a blanket and spent a couple hours on the front lawn. It was a beautiful sight. I've only tried once since then. Guess I'd better get on the ball.
Can it only be seen in the continental US. I live in Hawaii. Not sure if I can.
According to BigGiantHead, it can be seen worldwide as long as the sky is clear.
What an experience for my family, last night we went to the lake and we saw about 6 meteors but had a blast just laying in the road and humming and just had good family fun. We plan on doing it again tonight.♥