Tonight, August 12, is the peak viewing time for the Perseid Meteor Shower. Best viewed after midnight and if your sky is clear the prediction is for over 60 meteors visible per minute! Of course it makes a big difference if you can get away from bright city lights, but you can still see a lot from your backyard.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2...rseids2009.htm

What's a meteor shower?

Meteor showers occur when the Earth encounters the debris fields left behind by visiting comets. As comets travel through space and near the sun, small particles of rock and metal break off, leaving fragments in their wake like a trail of crumbs.

These fragments are called meteoroids, and when they enter the Earth's atmosphere, they burn up because of friction and can glow for several seconds, lighting up the night sky.

If a part of the meteor survives the trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it's a meteorite. But that is a rare occurrence.

Meteoroids are usually pretty small. According to NASA, most meteors range in size from one millimetre to one centimetre in diameter, barely more than a grain of sand. The light they produce while burning up, however, is very intense and can be seen from hundreds of kilometres away.

Many people call these celestial fireworks "shooting stars," but they really don't have anything to do with stars at all.

Why are they so bright?

The intense light of a meteor breaking up is created when a dust particle hits air molecules in the Earth's atmosphere. The impact vapourizes the outer layers of the meteor, leaving a trail of iron, magnesium and sodium.

When this trail of molecules makes subsequent impact with air molecules, the electrons are "bashed" out of their regular orbit with their corresponding nuclei, creating light in the process.

The colour of light produced depends upon the composition of the meteorite. Iron particles produce yellow light; sodium particles produce orange-yellow light; magnesium produces a blue-green light and silicon atoms produce red light.

How are they named?

The debris from a comet travels in parallel lines, and when that hits the Earth's atmosphere, it appears to originate from a single point, just as parallel train tracks appear to converge to a single point.

The Perseids, for example, get their name from the constellation Perseus, because that is where the shower appears to originate. Similarly, November's Leonids appear to come from within the constellation Leo, and December's Geminids appear to originate from within the constellation Gemini.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...-perseids.html

I totally missed this..tossed and turned all night but never looked out the windows! ~sigh did you see it Scrabble? Anybody?

We did....

it rained all day yesterday (even when I was 3 hours away)...
I usually do get to see the Perseids every other year or so. They are pretty cool.

Don't fret, the Leonids will be around in Nov...

(no, it's not called the Leonids because of Leonardo Decapitated, it is because the meteors are massively concentrated around the leo constellation. )

btw, Perseus is one of my favorite Greek Myth Heroes.

It had been overcast during much of the day here ... and then it started to clear off and I could see some sky, as dusk loomed.

I kept an eye out and the first time I went outside was around 11:30 pm when the moon had not yet risen. It was nice and dark and I saw a couple of brilliant meteors streak across the sky! The wind soon picked up and I was feeling too cold to linger (without a coat) so I went back inside to watch late night TV and crochet. I went back around 2 am (wearing pants and a hoodie) and I saw another nice streak in the sky before I went to bed.