The 2016 edition of the Perseid Meteor Shower should be a good one. In most years the meteor shower produces 60 to 120 meteors per hour as seen under dark sky conditions but this year the Earth will be plowing through a more dense stream of cometary debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle. On the morning of Friday, August 12th the shower peaks with up to 200 meteors per hour predicted. NASA’s video below explains the Perseid meteor shower as well as other astro highlights for the month.
As the constellation Perseus rises in the northeast the Moon will be setting in the southwest at about 1:30 a.m. CDT here in the DFW area. This will be the best time to begin watching for meteors. Choose a location away from city lights. Use a reclining lawn chair so you and lean back and encompass as much of the night sky as possible. It’s not necessary to focus your gaze on the constellation Perseus. All the meteors you see will appear to originate from this constellation if you were to trace them back to that point but you will be able to see meteors all over the sky. If you see a meteor that does not appear to trace back to Perseus in the northeast sky then you know you’ve seen a “sporadic” meteor (one not related to the current meteor shower).
Sky watchers will be out in force early Saturday morning May 24th looking for meteors appearing from the northern part of the sky. The new shower known as the Camelopardalids have the potential to be the biggest meteor shower event this year with up to 200 meteors per hour.
This years Perseid meteor shower should be a good one. I encourage you to get out and bag some Perseid meteors. Perseids come from the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle and are an annual favorite for many sky observers. The Moon should be setting just as the shower starts picking up. Look for meteors any time after dark on the nights of August 11, 12 and 13. The shower actually peaks on the night of August 12th. For best results find a dark sky away from city lights and relax on a reclining lawn chair. Keep your gaze on the starry sky and wait. The shower’s radiant located near the Double Cluster in Perseus will clear the horizon an hour or so before midnight but you’ll spot meteors prior to that happening. The meteor rate should pick up as the night goes on until they reach 50 to 100 per hour. This normally will occur in the early morning hours.
You can look for “earthgrazers” right after dark and until 10 p.m. or so. Earthgrazers are meteors that skim the top of Earth’s atmosphere like a stone skipping across the surface of a pond. They appear when the radiant of a meteor shower is near the horizon, spewing meteoroids not down, but horizontally overhead. They are rare and usually speculator to see as they can be very long lived, starting in the eastern sky and slowly crossing the zenith and fading of in the western sky. You’ll know it if you spot an earthgrazer! I saw three in one night during the peak of the Perseids a decade ago and still remember it quite well.
Here are some fun things to do while watching a meteor shower. 1) Count the number of meteors you see and compare your numbers with your fellow meteor watchers. 2) Trace the meteor back to where it originated in the sky. If it points back to the constellation Perseus then you know you saw a Perseid. If it doesn’t then you probably saw a “sporadic” meteor (one not associated with the current shower) 3) Try capturing images of some of the brighter meteors by using a tripod mounted camera with wide field lens. Try long exposures of several minutes with fast focal ratios and shoot different parts of the sky. You might catch a brilliant fireball but if not you’ll have some cool star trail shots showing the different colors (temperatures) of the stars.
The 2013 Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaks tomorrow morning, Sunday May 5th. The best time to view the sky is that couple of hours prior to dawn. The Eta Aquarids can produce up to 20 to 40 meteors per hour. This shower favors the southern hemisphere slightly but on a good year from the southern portion of the U.S. you might see about 10 to 15 meteors per hour.
This year is predicted to be a good year as the moonlight from the waning crescent moon shouldn’t cause to much trouble. The Eta Aquarid meteors are swift-moving and seasoned sky watchers know to look for persistent trains from the brighter ones.
The graphic above shows the sky looking east at 5 a.m. on Sunday May 5, 2013. The red Telrad bulls-eye is the Eta Aquarid shower’s radiant The radiant is that point in the sky where the meteors appear to originate from but you do not have to look only at the radiant to see the meteors. In fact, looking in that general direction if the sky a better choice.
How to bag the most meteors? I recommend finding a dark sky, a friend, don’t forget the coffee, a couple of lawn chairs that will allow you to lay back and take in as much sky as possible and enjoy the celestial show. Happy hunting!
Current amateur astronomy information such as points of interest and events in the night sky, star party dates, educational information, telescopes buying tips and much more.
