Perseid Pictures: Meteor Shower Dazzles Every August

Early Perseids 2010 Show
Photograph courtesy Dennis di Cicco, Sky & Telescope
A meteor streaks over the Stellafane Observatory in Springfield, Vermont, on August 7, near the start of the annual Perseid meteor shower.
The 2010 Perseids sky show reaches its peak Thursday night, with a moonless sky providing near-perfect observing conditions late Thursday into early Friday, astronomers say.
The Perseids should be most visible between 3 p.m. ET on August 12 and 2 a.m. ET on August 13. A very thin, waxing crescent moon will set about an hour after sunset, leaving behind a dark night sky for the Perseid meteors to shine. (Read about another sky show this week featuring a planetary triangle.)
Observers in Europe and North America should see the most meteors at the start of the peak, while in Asia the best show should be early Friday, according to Raminder Singh Samra, resident astronomer at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia. (See asteroid and comet pictures.)
People in the Southern Hemisphere should be able to see the 2010 Perseids too, Samra said, but it won't be as brilliant as up north.
—With reporting by Andrew Fazekas
Published August 11, 2010
Streaking Perseid
Photograph by Michel Tournay, My Shot
A Perseid meteor enlivens a green-tinted night sky in Chisasibi, Quebec, on August 12, 2008.
Like clockwork every mid-August, Earth slams into a giant cloud of debris left behind by comet Swift-Tuttle's close passes of the sun, which occur every 130 years or so. (Related: "Perseid Meteor Shower to Yield 80 Meteors an Hour?" [2009].)
Hitting the atmosphere at speeds of almost 100,000 miles (160,000 kilometers) an hour, the Perseid meteors burn up and produce streaks of light that each last just a fraction of a second.
Published August 11, 2010
Mountain Meteor
Photograph by Denis Balibouse, Reuters
A Perseid meteor illuminates the skies over mountains north of Geneva, Switzerland, on August 12, 2009. (See more pictures of the 2009 Perseids.)
While most "shooting stars" are faint, observers of any meteor shower should be on the lookout for brighter fireballs, the space center's Samra noted.
"As the Earth passes through the dust trails of comets, it encounters debris from the size of grains of sand to [the size of] boulders," Samra said.
"When pieces of debris from the size of a grapefruit and larger enter the atmosphere, you can expect to see fireball meteors."
Published August 11, 2010
Perseid Meteor Up Close
Photograph courtesy Pete Lawrence
The Perseid meteor shower (pictured, a meteor over West Sussex, U.K., on August 12, 2009) appears to radiate from its namesake constellation Perseus, which rises above the local horizon around midnight in the northeastern sky.
Depending on location, forecasters say observers of the 2010 Perseid meteor shower can expect to see up to 30 meteors an hour in city suburbs during the shower's peak. People in darker, rural areas may see as many as 200 meteors an hour. (Take a Perseids quiz: are you a meteor shower mastermind?)
More modest rates of 10 to 20 shooting stars an hour will be visible for a couple of nights before and after the peak, experts say.
Published August 11, 2010
Desert Solitaire
Photograph by Babak Tafreshi, TWAN
A Perseid meteor darts over moonlit Iranian rock formations in the Elburz Mountains in an August 13, 2009 photograph.
Predicting when we'll see the most meteors is still a work in progress, as astronomers are slowly mapping out the structure of the Perseid meteor stream, according to Geza Gyuk, staff astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. (Get more Perseids facts.)
"There is a lot of 'art' involved still, and surprises are nothing to be surprised at!" Gyuk said in an email.
"In fact, that is one of the joys of trying to catch the Perseids: One never knows what sort of treat may be in store."
Published August 11, 2010
Perseids: Comet Debris
Photograph by Tamas Ladanayi, TWAN
Each year Earth passes through the debris of comet Swift-Tuttle, though the comet itself passes Earth only about once every 130 years.
The meteoroids get incinerated in our atmosphere, and the heated air makes the showy streaks we see as meteors, or shooting stars (pictured, a meteor above a ruin in Hungary on August 8).
Within a few days of each other, U.S. astronomers Lewis Swift and Horace Parnell Tuttle separately discovered comet Swift-Tuttle during the U.S. Civil War in 1862.
The Perseid parent's next appearance near Earth was in 1992. Comet Swift-Tuttle is expected again in 2125.
(Related: "Perseids Dazzle, But Don't Endanger, Astronauts.")
Published August 11, 2010
Perseids Over the Rockies
Photograph by Yuichi Takasaka, TWAN
When we see the Perseids streaking through the sky (pictured: a meteor over the Canadian Rockies' Banff National Park in an August 2009 picture), we call them meteors. But the terms can get tricky.
Meteoroids are pieces of rock and ice in outer space. It's when the meteoroids enter Earth's atmosphere and burn up—as many Perseids will this week—that they become meteors.
If a meteor survives and ends up on the ground, it's rechristened a meteorite. But don't bother starting a Perseid-meteorite search party.
"Since Perseids are ice with a little dust mixed in, they never make it to the ground," Bill Cooke, a meteoroid expert for NASA in Huntsville, Alabama, said in 2009.
Published August 11, 2010
Perseids Diagram
Diagram courtesy Sky & Telescope
To spot the 2010 Perseids, look for the shooting stars to streak out from the northeast to points across the sky, especially at and after midnight—as pictured in this diagram of the August 12, 2010, night sky over the Northern Hemisphere.
The best way to observe the Perseids is with unaided eyes, lying comfortably on the ground or on a reclining chair. (See pictures of our vanishing night in National Geographic magazine.)
Published August 11, 2010