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General Category => Huh? => Topic started by: Fansome on August 07, 2018, 0307 UTC
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'Awesome' Perseid meteor shower coming this weekend to a sky near you
Doyle Rice, USA TODAY Published 11:00 a.m. ET Aug. 3, 2018 | Updated 10:09 a.m. ET Aug. 6, 2018
The best summertime meteor shower – the Perseids – will be coming to a sky near you this coming weekend, weather permitting.
During the Perseids' peak on the nights of Aug. 11-12 and Aug. 12-13, skywatchers should see about 60 to 70 meteors per hour, Space.com said. The best views will come before dawn on the 13th, Astronomy magazine predicts.
An added bonus is that moonlight will not interfere with the spectacle this year. "The moon will be near new moon, it will be a crescent, which means it will set before the Perseid show gets underway after midnight," NASA's Bill Cooke told Space.com.
Earthsky's Bruce McClure said "it should be an awesome year to watch the Perseids!"
At best, a typical Perseid meteor shower produces 80 to a few hundred meteors per hour. The best Perseid performance we know of occurred in 1993, when the peak rate topped 300 meteors per hour, Cooke said.
What's great about the Perseids is they can be enjoyed during summer's warmth, unlike the often nippy nights during the Leonids of November or Geminids of December. "This major shower takes place during the lazy, hazy days of summer, when many families are on vacation," McClure said.
The Perseid meteor shower occurs every year when the Earth passes through the cloud of debris left by Comet Swift-Tuttle. The meteors are actually tiny dust and particles from the tail of the comet as it orbits around the sun.
The particles, many no bigger than a grain of sand or a pea, blast across the sky at some 132,000 mph and disintegrate high up in our atmosphere after making a brilliant flash of light.
Meteor showers are named for the constellation out of which they appear to come, according to the American Meteor Society. Look for the constellation Perseus in the northeastern portion of the sky. It's just to the left of the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters constellation.
In ancient Greek star lore, Perseus is the son of the god Zeus and the mortal Danae, according to Earthsky. It is said that the Perseid shower commemorates the time when Zeus visited Danae, the mother of Perseus, in a shower of gold.
No special equipment is needed to enjoy this nighttime spectacle, just a dark sky and some patience. "Remember, your eyes can take as long as 20 minutes to truly adapt to the darkness of night," McClure said. "So don’t rush the process."
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spaceweather.com has a story about it on their homepage now, with an image of a fireball captured by a camera - nearly a full week before the peak. It ought to be an awesome show this year.
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I thought this was now called the "Presley Meteor Shower" engineered by the Universe to honor the death of a version of it's incarnate creator on the crapper a few days later in 1977.
He'll be back some day, that "Elvis has left the building" bit was always used to set up the encore. Jesus, Dionysus, Krishna, Osiris, Elvis, it's all the same guy. "Uh, huh, huh"? The chant of the dying and resurrecting demi-gods.
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I heard there will be a slight aberration in the shower this year as the bolides will appear to come out of the newly discovered Penguin Constellation.
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I could be Al's home planet calling. Al F. = Alf = Alien Life Form. It could be why they're bringing back the show? Al will be reprising his role from the first one. Keep your cat's inside and a big "Howdy" to all you Melmacians lurking.
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I keep telling you Elvis lives down by the river in a van with Salmon Rushdie and Jim Morrison.
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Don't you mean down by the water diverter?
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Elvis was reborn yesterday in a Chillicothe ,OH. Burger King women's room. Mom was passed out on the floor in mid-delivery and the staff found the anxious father nodding off in the car amongst his anti-anxiety powders and the syringes he and the wife were using to inject a concoction cut with her anesthesia, fentenyl. The paramedics delivered the new King. They were guided by a light from above that told them where to find him. The Three Wise Guys working in the kitchen told the police, "We've been waiting for it to happen, it did. It was just a matter of time with the crowd that comes in here."
A Burger King bathroom beats the heck out of manger for humble beginnings. And young Elvis had his first Whopper Jr. before being transported to the hospital. Like most God-incarnates, he was born with a full set of teeth and the ability to place an order.