08/13/2022
The Perseids Meteor Showers are here! 💫✨ Look up at the night sky tonight —and all weekend— to see the year’s best sky show!
NASA Science explains that a meteor is "a space rock—or meteoroid—that enters Earth's atmosphere. As the space rock falls toward Earth, the resistance—or drag—of the air on the rock makes it extremely hot. What we see is a 'shooting star.' That bright streak is not actually the rock, but rather the glowing hot air as the hot rock zips through the atmosphere." When this happens with many meteoroids at once, it’s called a meteor shower.
“Meteor showers are best observed after midnight when our hemisphere plows into the meteor stream,” advises Harrowsmith’s astronomy expert, Robert Dick. “Although the duration of the most active portion of the shower is short, some meteors can be seen for many days on either side of the maximum.”
More from Robert Dick: “There are about a dozen significant meteor showers each year. The Perseids are the premier meteor shower of the year. Its long duration will bridge cloudy nights. However, the near-full moon on August 12 makes this a poor year to observe this shower.
Saturn will lead the bright full moon across the sky on the night of the Perseid meteor shower. The meteor shower peaks on the night of August 12 and the morning of the 13th, but you can see the Perseids for a week or two on each side of the maximum night if you want to avoid the full light of the moon.
Following 2 hours behind the moon is Jupiter. If you hold your binoculars very steady, you may be able to see the Galilean moons as they slowly orbit the planet. Watch them shift position from night to night.”
