Signs in the Heavens This Week
Wednesday and Thursday nights promise excellent opportunities to watch the Perseids blast through the black sky. Last year, the bright moon stole the stage and made for lousy Perseid viewing. This year, the new moon has politely left the sky nice and dark so that the meteor shower can be enjoyed with little luminary interference. Also known as “the Tears of St. Lawrence,” the Perseids’ annual show always falls around August 10, the day that commemorates St. Lawrence’s fiery martyrdom during the reign of Valerian.
The August Perseid meteor shower offers one of the year’s best light shows. Between 90 and 100 meteors will fall every hour, and the view gets even better after midnight. Imagine that the earth has a face, and all day long our planet hurtles through space facing backwards. But, as it rotates after midnight into the new day, the earth noses into the very direction that it’s zooming, and it dives face-first into the dust-cloud left from the comet Swift-Tuttle. Sometimes the meteors are so large and close that they hiss and sizzle as they burn across the sky at 37 miles per second.
This year, the earth will hit the densest part of the comet debris trail about 8pm Eastern Daylight Savings Time on Wednesday evening. Paper carriers will have the best view-time, as the prime hours to watch will be between 2am and daybreak. As long as the clouds keep away, the dark hours of Wednesday night August 11th into Thursday morning August 12th and Thursday night into Friday morning will provide the best times to pull out the lawn chairs and sit back and count the shower of “falling stars” that follow.
