August is always the month of the Perseid meteor shower and always one that I look forward to and I’m pretty sure you all do too!   Hopefully you saw them last month.

 

We also got to see the Northern lights on the night of the peak.

 

But…what are they? What causes them? Where do they come from? What do they look like?

 

Let’s start with Meteoroids and Meteorites.

 

Earth experiences a continuous rain of interplanetary objects, which are known as meteoroids, which can be the size of a grain of sand to the size of boulders. When they enter the Earth’s atmosphere the meteoroid them becomes a meteor, which is a visible streak of light across the sky, sometimes which we call shooting stars.

 

The ones that manage to come through Earth’s atmosphere and hit the ground are then meteorites.

 

A meteoroid is a part of a comet or an asteroid, and the debris burns up in the atmosphere.

 

Meteors can be bright as Venus and show as fireballs.Meteors appear between 50-75 miles above the Earth’s surface and range from 25,000 and 160,000 miles per hour in speed.

 

The larger and brighter meteors can fragment which causes a visible smoke trail, which can be tens of miles long.

 

Now, we move on to meteor showers.

 

On a night without the moon we can see around 4-5 meteors per hour, sometimes more, sometimes less. When a comet orbits the sun and enters the inner part of the solar system it starts to defrost a little being warmed by the sun. Parts of the icy crust then turns into vapour, in which solar radiation blows this off the comets surface. When the Earths moves into this debris, the icy particles enter and burn in our atmosphere, which we then get meteor showers. In this case we see the Perseids from the debris of Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle.

 

The meteor shower is named from the nearest point in the sky in the constellation where the meteors appear to come from. This is what we call the radiant. When the radiant is more than halfway up in the sky it is the best time for them to be viewed.

 

The ZHR (Zenith hourly rate) is the meteors activities that an observer sees in an hour in a very dark sky when the radiant is overhead and is at its peak. Annual Meteor Showers 2024 Image from Starwalk Image from Accuweather.

 

 Observing Meteors

 

Visibility is best seen with the naked eye, you don’t need any special equipment. The best time to see meteors is after midnight into the early hours.

It is best to go to a dark night sky location area away from city lights and observe the sky for as long as possible.

 

Check the weather, you can’t observe meteors on a cloudy night!

 

Make sure you have the right equipment – A chair to be comfortable in and a blanket to keep you warm, or even a sleeping bag. A red flashlight, so this doesn’t disrupt your observing.

 

Binoculars can help you see the fainter meteors, but they are not necessary.

 

Lots of patience, it might be a while before you see a meteor and your eyes need to adjust to the night sky.​​​

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