Saturday, August 11, 2012

Perseid Meteor Shower to Peak Tonight


The annual Perseid Meteor Shower will peak tonight. The above shot of a meteor was taken by Pete Lawrence in England last night.  

Hopefully the weather will cooperate in your area (i.e., clear or just partly cloudy skies) and you'll be in for quite a treat, assuming you like watching this sort of thing, of course.  As an added bonus, the moon will be in its waning crescent stage, which means that it won't really interfere all that much as far as additional light is concerned.


The above map shows an example of how you might view Perseid meteors while looking toward the Northeast at 10pm local time.  The image below is an example valid around 4am local time, also looking toward the Northeast:


The shower will peak just before dawn on Sunday morning, when 40 or more meteors per hour may be visible in the Northeastern sky.

For best results, drive outside of town to as dark an area as possible.  For more tips, I suggest this article on the American Meteor Society's website.



For more information from the Original Weather Blog, including "live blogging" during rapidly changing weather events, please be sure to follow me on facebook and/or twitter:
 


No comments: