Posted on 08/11/2023 9:48:32 PM PDT by metmom
The Perseid meteor shower is one of the best shooting star displays of the year and it's currently active.
The Perseid meteor shower (also known as the Perseids) is active every year from mid-July to late August.
This year the shower will peak around the night of Aug. 12 and before dawn on Aug.13, 2023, according to the science site Royal Museums Greenwich.
2023 will be a good year for the Perseids as the moon will only be 10% illuminated.
The Perseids are caused by Earth passing through debris — bits of ice and rock — left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle which last passed close to Earth in 1992. The Perseids peak when Earth passes through the densest and dustiest area on Aug. 11-12. Years without moonlight see higher rates of meteors per hour, and in outburst years (such as in 2016) the rate can be between 150-200 meteors an hour.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
https://www.space.com/39469-best-meteor-showers.html
I was just outside watching for 15 minutes. Rousted out my family.
We saw a bunch of momentary flashes, plus on streak that last around a second, and another that must have been two seconds plus, and crossed nearly a quarter of the sky.
Paiging Graham Hancock! Is this the year we should worry about?
I saw a about 6 good ones.
I guess tonight is supposed to be the better night, but the forecast here is for mostly cloudy and rain.
Grrrr......
What time were you viewing? Midnight last night, I saw two in about 1/2 hour.
This is not “just” good for sky gazing, it does amazing things to radio waves.
Ham Operators look for them every year, some years the affect is much larger than others. At times in the lower range of the VHF band, the effect is the most noticeable.
It was about then. I saw five good ones.
Interesting.
What effect does it have?
Radio propagation in the upper atmosphere (the ionosphere) is affected by what is called ionization. The sun’s rays increase and decrease at times, that changes the ionization level.
The radio waves transmitted from the surface of the earth deflect/refract back from the ionized layer back to another area on the earth.
The meteors breaking up into small particles upon entry near our atmosphere causes the ionization level to increase greatly. Similar to the reflection caused by aluminum chafe from military aircraft when it is fired to hide the aircraft from radar. Like throwing dust in your enemies eyes.
After reading paragraphs of much more than I wanted to know what you need to know is:
Best time, before sunup, 0300 or so onward.
Where, look to the NE
I don’t get the trend these days of authors thinking they need to write War and Peace with a preamble just as long to give a piece of information buried way down deep in the article in bits and pieces. Just get to the point.
My understanding is that between midnight and 3AM is the best viewing.
It’s dark enough then to see the best and as the earth rotates, the leading edge, so to speak, is going into the debris trail, so vector addition comes into play.
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