The annual Perseid meteor
shower dazzled skywatchers around the globe overnight as it sent a meteor a
minute racing overhead during peak hours at some locations. Viewers also reported
several very bright shooting stars.
While the event continues
for the next several days, the peak activity occurred Wednesday night and Thursday
morning.
Larry Caracciolo watched
from about 3,500 feet up on Mt. Hood in Oregon.
"The shower seemed to peak
between midnight to 1 a.m. local Thursday morning, characterized by lots of
bright meteors with luminescent trails," Caracciolo told SPACE.com. "Meteor
colors were predominantly red, orange, and blue." Haze cut into the viewing
after 1 a.m., he said.
In Germany, Lou Burgess
saw about 60 meteors in a one-hour span before dawn Thursday.
"We had a great show last
night," Burgess said via e-mail.
Daniel van Os counted 318
meteors in 310 minutes from The Netherlands. He said there seemed to be many
that were very bright.
Seasoned meteor observer
Marco Langbroek, also of The Netherlands, reported a "peculiar number of bright
meteors" during a break in sometimes cloudy conditions. "Very odd," he reported
to a meteor-observing bulletin board called Meteorobs.
Several hundred people turned
out at the George Observatory Fort Bend County, Texas, to scan the sky. Barbara
Wilson reported to Meteorobs a tally of 71 Perseid meteors counted during a
two-and-a-half hour stretch. The pace picked up just before clouds blotted out
the show, she said.
The Perseids begin in late
July and run for about a month, with a sharp peak that generally comes Aug.
11-12. Skywatchers can still expect to see a dozen or so shooting stars each
hour Thursday night and Friday morning, with a handful of stragglers into the
weekend. Other meteors not associated with the Perseids are also visible this
time of year.
Early morning hours are
generally the best time to look for meteors, because that is when the side of
Earth an observer stands on is facing the space into which the planet plunges
on its orbital trip around the Sun. Meteors are scooped up in the predawn hours
much like bugs hitting a car's front bumper. During evening hours, meteors must
catch up to the planet, so fewer are evident.
The Perseids are the result
of stream of debris in space laid down by comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the
Sun every 130 years and spends most of its time in the far reaches of the solar
system. On each pass inward, bits of dust -- mostly the size of sand grains
but sometimes as big as marbles -- boil from the comet's surface. When Earth
passes through the debris each August, the bits are vaporized in the atmosphere.
The Perseids are said to
extend from July 17 to Aug. 24, though the bulk of the activity is
concentrated in the days surrounding the peak. The next major meteor shower
will be the Leonids in November.
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