The skies are expected to brighten this week – but it’s nothing to do with sunshine: the annual Perseid meteor shower is nearing its peak.
Considered one of the best meteor showers of the year, the Perseids are active from mid-July and is predicted to peak overnight from Monday 12 August to Tuesday 13 August.
However, Dr Ed Bloomer, a senior astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said there would not be a dramatic rise and fall in visibility.
“The Perseids should provide good viewing for several days on either side, with local weather and light conditions likely to be more important factors than the exact mathematical peak,” he said.
The meteors appear to come from between the constellations Camelopardalis and Persus, from which they get their name. Bloomer said it is advisable to look at them out of the corner of the eye.
“Perseus rises in the northeast as the sun sets, so you might want to look more to the east,” he said, noting that peripheral vision is more sensitive under low light conditions than central vision.
The spectacle, best seen in the Northern Hemisphere, occurs when Earth is struck in a shower of material from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle as the planet orbits the Sun.
When the fragments – often no larger than a grain of sand – hit the atmosphere, the air in front of them is compressed, generating heat and causing the fragments to burn up. The result is the appearance of bright streaks across the sky.
“[The comet] is on this big, long 133-year orbit around the Sun, and it’s essentially debris trailing behind – so Swift-Tuttle makes its orbit, but the Earth then essentially collapses into that path year after year,” Bloomer said. and adds that this means the meteor shower comes at the same time, and from the same part of the sky, every year.
To optimize the chance of catching a glimpse of the celestial display, stargazers are advised to go to a dark area at night, or at least turn away from street lights and avoid looking at phones.
“You can be lucky and see a fireball, [that’s] a bit of debris about the size of your fist coming through the atmosphere – it can go [on] for five, 10 seconds. You might even see it break up, and that’s pretty special,” Bloomer said. “But most of these things are small flashes.”
While Bloomer said it can be fun to watch with others, he noted that the fleeting appearance of the Perseids makes for a personal experience. He recommends lying on the grass and looking up.
“It’s not fireworks,” he said. “But you kind of see the mechanics of the solar system at work, which is quite an interesting thing.”
