CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida -- The summer's best meteor shower peaks this weekend on Saturday August 11, 2012. Even
though the nights leading up to the Perseids meteor shower peak will be
hampered by a waning full moon, they will still be easily seen by people
on Earth.
For the 2012 Perseids meteor shower, a waning half moon will set darker skies each night following the peak of the shower. The Perseids meteor shower will be viewable all over the world. The major determining factor on where a good place is to watch the Perseids
meteor shower will be determined by the viewer's local cloud cover.
NASA says that the Perseids have been observed for about 2,000 years. The source of the
annual meteor shower is the debris trail left behind comet
Swift-Tuttle. Each year in August, the Earth passes through a cloud of
the comet's debris. These bits of ice and dust burn up in the Earth's
atmosphere.
Most of the Perseid meteors that we observe now were ejected from Swift-Tuttle about 1,000 years ago. Marshall’s meteor camera network captured some of the meteors or "shooting stars" during the peak.
You can tell if a meteor belongs to a particular shower by tracing back its path to see if it originates near a specific point in the sky, called the radiant. The constellation in which the radiant is located gives the shower its name, and in this case, Perseids appear to come from a point in the constellation Perseus.
IMAGE CREDIT: NASA/MSFC/Meteoroid Environment Office
2 comments:
Just FYI, August 11, 2012 is Saturday, not Sunday.
Thanks!
Thank you.
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