The evening of August 11th, the Moon forms a nice trio in the south with Mars and Saturn, coincidentally the peak night of the year’s most popular meteor shower, the Perseids (purr-SEE-ids). Every year the Earth’s orbit skims the edge of Comet Swift-Tuttle’s debris field, but this time around, Jupiter’s gravity appears to be giving the comet’s dust trails a little extra tug, pulling a few of them a little more into the centre of our path. The result may be that the normal average of 50 - 100 ‘shooting stars’ per hour may average 200 or better.
Your best views will be the evening of August 11th / morning of August 12th, the closer to sunrise the better. However, if you’re normally in bed before midnight and busy this evening, any time of night for the next week or two will still be decent. As with all showers, you want to be somewhere with good horizons, like the middle of a canola field, a treeless country road or unlit urban park. A location free of artificial light is essential.
This year, the Moon will be a bit of a pain before midnight, but it’s the man-made lights you want to avoid. Bring the bug spray. Binoculars are a nice addition for glimpsing at stuff you’ll spot while staring up at the sky.
Lean back in a chair, or better, lie on your back in an area free of ant hills. Allow at least thirty minutes for your eyes to adapt to the darkness.
Note that looking at your smart phone’s bright screen will destroy your night vision immediately, and that of everyone else near by. Unless it has a nightvision feature, resist the urge to update your Facebook status.
Look straight up in any direction; meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, but their tails will point back to a single point, in this case, a spot in the constellation Perseus, currently in the north - northwest. Bonus: there are six lesser showers on at the same time; so you could spot the occasional meteor coming from a different areas of the sky.
The Perseids tend to increase in numbers as the skies darken, strengthening throughout the night into the wee small hours before dawn, so the later you’re up, the better. The dust that forms the Perseids enters the atmosphere at a speedy 60 kilometres per second and burns up at an altitude of around 80 kilometres; meteors are typically fast and bright, with some leaving brief ‘smoke trains’ behind.
Of course, the higher rates are just a prediction, and the Moon, Mars, Saturn and the Olympics have nothing to do with it, but even if the higher rates don’t come to pass, the Perseids will still make your time outside worthwhile.
It’s the year’s gold medal shower, and it’s available from your own (dark) back yard.
