From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Sun Aug 11 2002 - 23:10:17 MDT
'Weather permitting' (heh)
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=323651
Perseid meteors to blaze across the sky tonight
By Dan Gledhill
12 August 2002
A celestial light show is promised tonight - weather permitting - as the
Earth ploughs through a thick cloud of comet dust.
The Perseid meteor shower, which puts on a display at this time every
year, will peak tonight, sending shooting stars blazing trails across
the sky at a rate of up to two a minute. This year's Perseid show should
be a good one as there will be virtually no moon and the number of
meteors is expected to be higher than usual.
The Perseids, which have long mystified and terrified sky-watchers, were
first recorded in the annals of China's Han dynasty in AD36, are so
named because they appear to emerge from the eastern constellation of
Perseus. The meteors are debris shed by a six-mile-wide comet,
Swift-Tuttle, that sails into our solar system from beyond Pluto every
135 years.
Ten years ago, Swift-Tuttle passed the Sun and the comet is now heading
back towards the far-off Oort Cloud on the outer edge of the solar
system, which is home to millions of similar comets.
When the comet particles hit the Earth's atmosphere at 135,000mph they
become glowing hot and appear as shooting stars criss-crossing the sky
in all directions. Most produce bright white streaks, but sometimes they
burst like fireballs.
Robin Scagell, of the Society for Popular Astronomy, said: "The best
time to watch will be from about 10pm onwards. The meteors will appear
to come from the east but can appear anywhere in the sky.
"You can be anywhere in the UK but it's best to be away from street
lights and in the country. Try to see as much of the sky as possible in
order to have the best chance of seeing a shooting star," he said.
Swift-Tuttle was first observed in 1862 by two American astronomers,
Lewis Swift and Horace Parnell Tuttle.
-----------------------
Gary Kronk's Comets and Meteor Showers: the Perseids
http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/perseids.html
A nice twist:
Lunar Meteoritic Impacts Search
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~rhill/alpo/lunarstuff/lunimpacts.html#Lunar
Impact Alert
(A program designed to standardize and coordinate amateur observations of
potential meteoric impacts on the Moon.)
-- *********************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ *********************************************************************** "Living on earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the sun." --Ashleigh Brilliant
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