Homeboy Astronomy Blog - Homeboy Astronomy Blog – Down-to-Earth Advices for Amateur Astronomers

This week has been very interesting for amateur astronomers here on northern hemisphere. First we saw the solar eclipse and now we are cheered by the Perseids meteor shower, which is probably the best known meteor show. Perseids meteor shower provides almost every time a good meteor show, and tonight we are expecting even better one.

Perseids meteor shower has now reached its maximum

Perseids meteor shower is active between July 17th and August 24th. The maximum of Perseids meteor shower is today, August 12th at 2:30pm – 17pm EET. This is right now! Unfortunately it is daytime here in Finland, so we cannot see the predicted maximum. Anyhow, Perseids meteor shower will not fade away quickly, so you should keep on watching the night sky for few days from now on. I believe the following couple of nights will provide us a good meteor show, because during the maximum of Perseids meteor shower one can see even 100 meteors in one hour. Right now the weather here in Finland is pretty lousy, so I hope it gets better for the night.

So what is Perseids meteor shower anyway? Let’s see what Wikipedia says about it.

“The Perseids is a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle. The Perseids are so called because the point they appear to come from, called the radiant, lies in the constellation Perseus. Meteor showers occur when Earth moves through a meteor stream. The stream in this case is called the Perseid cloud and it stretches along the orbit of the Comet Swift-Tuttle. The cloud consists of particles ejected by the comet as it passed by the Sun. Most of the dust in the cloud today is approximately a thousand years old”.

Probably the first notes of Perseids are dated back to year 36 when the Chinese wrote “over 100 meteors flew this morning”. Many other markings of Perseids can be found from Chinese, Japanese and Korean archives. From those days August has been known as a “meteor rich” month.

Who was the first one researching the Perseids?

It was probably Eduard Heis (Münster) who saw 160 meteors in one hour back in 1839. Together with other observers Eduard continued his research almost yearly, and they calculated that in 1858 the maximum of Perseids meteor shower was 37-88 meteors in one hour. The interesting thing is that four other observers calculated noticed that the maximum of Perseids climbed up to 78-102 in 1861, and in 1863 it was 109-215 meteros in one hour.

Why Perseids meteor shower had so high maximum between 1861 and 1863? Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli (1835-1910) performed calculations related to Perseids and found out that the track of Perseids was strongly related to comet Swift-Tuttle (1862 III). The reason for the higher maximum of Perseids in 1861-1863 was that the comet Swift-Tuttle was moving inside our solar system.

What is expected from Perseids meteor shower this year?

After the maximum of 1983 the amount of Perseids went down to 60 meteors in one hour. In 1985 and 1986 the maximum of Perseids was about 40-60 meteors. In 1992 scientists announced that comet Swift-Tuttle is coming closer to Earth again. This triggered Perseids fans who expected a higher maximum in 1993. People all over the world travelled to Europe to see Perseids because it was expected to be seen best in Europe. Their trips were worth because many observers registered staggering maximums of 200-500 Perseids meteors in one hour.

So, how this year looks like? There are no Perseids related comets coming near to Earth, so tonight’s Perseids meteor shower is expected to provide us 40-70 meteors in one hour. Let’s see it tonight. If you are going to observe Perseids tonight, please leave a comment and tell us how many meteors you recognized.

How to find Perseids meteor shower?

So you would like to observe Perseids tonight, but you don’t know how to locate it? Finding Perseids meteor shower is pretty easy. Take a look at the picture above. Just click it to see it bigger. This picture is a screen capture of my night sky simulation program. The picture shows tonight’s sky when observed from Helsinki, Finland at 11 pm. Notice that your night sky might look different, depending on your position on planet Earth. Your night sky might not look similar to the picture, especially if you are located in southern hemisphere. If your location is near latitude 60, your sky should look much like the one in the picture. Some cities near latitude 60 are Helsinki (Finland), Aberdeen (Scotland), Glasgow (Scotland), Moscow (Russia), Oslo (Norway), Reykjavík (Iceland), St. Petersburg (Russia) and Stockholm (Sweden).

In order to locate Perseids meteor shower, look at between East and South directions. You should be able to locate constellations Perseus and Cassiopeia. If this is your first time watching constellations, it might not be easy to locate those two constellations. Try to find Cassiopeia first because it’s W-shape is easier to recognize than Perseus. After that, try to find Perseus by using the picture above.

After you have located Perseus and Cassiopeia, observe the area  between and around them, just like showed in the picture with red circle. You should see the meteors of Perseids in this area. If you see nothing, you are probably looking at wrong direction.

I hope you will see Perseids meteor shower. Please leave a comment later on and tell us what you saw. It would be very interesting to hear your story and see even pictures of your night sky and Perseids meteor shower.