“Perseid Meteor Shower Lights Skies With Shooting Stars - ABC News” plus 3 more |
- Perseid Meteor Shower Lights Skies With Shooting Stars - ABC News
- Perseid meteor shower peaking - Bucyrus Telegraph Forum
- Perseid meteor shower probably won't pelt spacewalking astronauts, says NASA - The Christian Science Monitor
- If skies are clear, you may see up to 100 meteors per hour as the Perseid shower ... - Examiner
| Perseid Meteor Shower Lights Skies With Shooting Stars - ABC News Posted: 13 Aug 2010 01:42 PM PDT Aug. 13, 2010 If you went outside between midnight and dawn this morning, and the Perseid meteor shower of 2010 was good to you, you could see the sky falling. Every year at this time, the Earth passes through the orbit of a comet called Swift-Tuttle, and the result is a meteor shower -- shooting stars, perhaps 50 or 60, and occasionally as many as 100 per hour, streaking across the night sky as debris from the comet enters the earth's atmosphere and burns up. If you're reading this story on Friday or later, you've missed the peak, but there are still likely to be a good number of meteors tonight. Diligent stargazers have spotted Perseid meteors -- so-called because they appear to come from the constellation Perseus in the northern sky -- two or three weeks before or after the best night. This year happens to be a particularly good one if you'd like to wish upon a star. There was a new moon Monday night, which meant the sky would be nice and dark after midnight. In general, there are more shooting stars in the morning hours -- since that's the side of the Earth that faces forward as we orbit the Sun, so it's less shielded from orbiting junk. Even though the comet itself is far beyond the Sun's planets now, in an elliptical orbit that only brings it close to the sun once every 133 years, rock and ice from it have spread out in a ring all along its path. The comet itself will probably be pretty good to see if you can hang on until July 2126, but in the meantime, like clockwork, it gives us a meteor shower in mid-August. "Expect to see dozens of meteors between midnight and dawn," said Rebecca Johnson, editor of StarDate magazine, published by the McDonald Observatory of the University of Texas. "Some will be faint, some bright. If you get really lucky, you might see a fireball -- a really large meteor streaking from one side of the sky to the other, and leaving a burning tail in its wake. That's pretty rare." Be alert; most meteors streak by in a second or less, sometimes in clusters. Most of the shooting stars are created by small cometary fragments, some as small as grains of sand, completely vaporized as they plunge into our protective blanket of air.
The best way to see them is to find a nice, dark place with no street lights and as few trees as possible, and look up. You may want to bring a lawn chair or a blanket. The streaks may be anywhere in the sky, though if they're Perseids they'll all appear to come from the north. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Perseid meteor shower peaking - Bucyrus Telegraph Forum Posted: 13 Aug 2010 08:05 AM PDT CLEVELAND -- The annual Perseid meteor shower is under way. Earth is passing through a wide stream of debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle, and each time a fleck of comet dust hits Earth's atmosphere--flash!--there is a meteor. Forecasters say the shower was to peak Aug. 12 and today. Observers who get away from city lights can expect to count dozens of meteors per hour, especially during the dark hours before dawn. A beautiful gathering of planets should be visible in the sunset sky -- Venus, Mars, Saturn and the crescent moon. For webcams, sky maps and more, see www.spaceweather.com. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Posted: 13 Aug 2010 12:16 PM PDT The Perseid meteor shower poses minimal risk to spacewalking astronauts trying to repair the International Space Station, and might even offer them a spectacular show. The Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight, promising dazzling fireball displays to lucky skywatchers, but the cosmic rain of space rocks hasn't endangered space station astronauts during their spacewalk repairs this week, a NASA scientist says. In fact, the meteor shower may give the astronauts a show too. Skip to next paragraphAstronomer Bill Cooke, a meteor expert with NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office, said the Perseid meteor shower adds a small amount of risk to astronauts on spacewalks (about 15 percent), but the chances of being hit by a tiny meteoroid from the shower are slim. "The risk is still below the risk posed by orbital debris and other factors," Cooke told SPACE.com from the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. IN PICTURES: Perseid meteor shower Currently, there is a 1-in-300 chance of a piece of orbital debris damaging the space station or hitting a spacewalking astronaut. Compared to that, the slight risk increase from the Perseids is negligible. A meteoroid about 1 millimeter in size is large enough to damage an astronaut's spacesuit during a spacewalk, Cooke said. But NASA spacewalk planners take the micrometeorite environment into account when scheduling excursions, he added. There are six astronauts living aboard the International Space Station; three Americans and three Russians. The crew is in the middle of a challenging set of four spacewalks to repair the space station's cooling system. One of two vital ammonia coolant pumps failed July 31 and station astronauts are tackling the tricky job of replacing the oven-sized part with a spare. They performed spacewalks on Saturday and Wednesday, with the next one set for Monday. If the space station astronauts are lucky, they may be able to see meteors from above as they soar 220 miles (354 km) above the Earth's night side. In the past, astronauts have been able to record video of meteors from space during shuttle missions. "You can definitely see meteors, and it's kind of cool," Cooke said. This sky map shows where to look to see the meteor shower. Skywatchers on Earth can use SPACE.com's planet alignment map to find and identify planets that are appearing together at the same time as the meteor shower. During the Perseid meteor shower, the Earth is pelted by remains of the Comet Swift-Tuttle as the planet passes close to the comet's orbit. Material left behind by the comet rams into the Earth's atmosphere during the pass at about 37 miles per second (60 km/second), creating an annual show of "shooting stars" every mid-August. One of the reasons the Perseids don't post a major risk to astronauts on the space station is because, astronomically speaking, astronauts are rather small, Cooke said. "When you look up in the sky, you see about 10,000 square-kilometers," Cooke said. "An astronaut's surface area is about 1 square-meter, he's not a very big target." The space station, too, is small compared to the entire night sky, Cooke added. Still, the $100 billion International Space Station is the largest spacecraft every built in space and has a main truss as long as a football field. It can easily outshine Venus on clear nights and be seen by the unaided eye. Cooke plans to stay up all night tonight to observe the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. The Marshall Space Flight Center is planning to stream live views and from its all-sky cameras in Alabama and Georgia via the Internet, he added. "It's NASA's first up-all-night," he said. IN PICTURES: Perseid meteor shower NASA's live Perseids meteor shower show begins Thursday night at 11 p.m. ET and runs through 5 a.m. ET Friday. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| If skies are clear, you may see up to 100 meteors per hour as the Perseid shower ... - Examiner Posted: 13 Aug 2010 10:57 AM PDT The most hotly anticipated light show of the year is happening tonight and if skies are clear in your area, you will be in for an spectacular show! This year's Perseid meteor shower peaks late tonight and early Friday morning and should produce a display of between 50 and 100 meteors per hour during that peak, according to NASA. Experts say with the crescent moon setting before the meteor shower begins, combined with clear skies could mean that tonight is the best Perseid meteor shower display since 2007. The lack of moon shine will leave skies darker than they would have been if the moon was present, leading to brighter views of the meteor shower. The best time to view the meteor show will be between 11 pm and 5 am, when the sky is at its darkest with the best meteor activity expected between 3 am and 4 am local time. Named because they come from the direction of the constellation Perseus in the northeastern sky, the meteors are actually the stream of debris cascading from the comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 133 years. As the particles, each no bigger than a grain of sand, hit the atmosphere at 135,000 mph they burn up, producing trails of light that shoot across the sky.
NASA will be running a live feed of the shower beginning as darkness falls on the East Coast. Mississippi Viewing Weather Conditions: The best viewing weather conditions will be found across Northern Mississippi, while the worst weather viewing conditions will be found across Southern Mississippi, where lots of cloud cover with scattered showers and thunderstorms will exist from the remnants of Tropical Depression #5 and where a Flash Flood Watch is in effect. Areas further north in Central Mississippi, including the Jackson Metro Area will have to contend with occasional cloud cover with a shower or storm possible as tropical moisture continues to increase from the south. If I had to give a grade on the viewing weather conditions: Jackson: C+ Meridian: C+ Tupelo: A- Southaven: A- Columbus: B+ Gulfport: F Hattiesburg: D- Vicksburg: B+ Natchez: D- McComb: F Greenville: A- Greenwood: A- What you should know if you plan to view the light show:
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