The Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak Thursday night and early Friday. The show this year promises much. Astronomy buffs can see twice as meteorites.
“Forecasters expect this year’s Perseid experience a rate twice meteor night of August 11 to August 12,” said Bill Cooke, NASA said in a statement. “Under perfect conditions, rates can rise to 200 meteors per hour.”
You might think that the Perseid meteor shower visit Earth every August. But in reality, we are the ones we visited his home every year. Our planet ventured into the path of celestial debris left by the Swift-Tuttle comet, which orbits the Sun every 133 years.
Usually, the Earth only grazes the edge of this flow of celestial debris, according to NASA. But this may be the year when Jupiter’s gravity attracts a little more this flow, allowing our planet to pass through precisely at the location where more heavenly remains, and therefore we can appreciate more meteors.
The Perseids have circulated through space to some 132.000 miles per hour or about 59 kilometers per second, a speed at which small pieces of dust can create a ray of light when they collide with our atmosphere. NASA says that meteors do not represent any kind of threat to our planet, as they tend to burn about 50 miles away from the Earth’s surface, reaching temperatures ranging from 3,000 degrees to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
to get a good view of the Perseids this year, get ready to go out between midnight and dawn on the morning of Friday, August 12. Stay away as possible from the artificial lighting, or give your eyes enough time to adjust to the dark. If you can not do this on Friday, also you have a good opportunity to appreciate the Perseids on Saturday, August 13th.
If you live in a concrete jungle or have bad luck it’s a cloudy night, you can watch the live broadcast of NASA Ustream (below) on 11 and 12 August and from the 7 pm US Pacific on 12 and 13 August.
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