William Atkins
Wednesday, 06 August 2008 21:20
Science -
Space
Page 2 of 3
At all times—while searching for the meteors—look in the direction of the northeastern sky—near the border of the constellations Perseus and Cassiopeia.
NASA has a nice sky map of the event for the morning of Tuesday, August
12, 2008 at its Science@NASA website “
The 2008 Perseid Meteor Shower.”
With the Earth traveling through the meteoroids (meteors that have yet to reach the atmosphere), the meteors (those going into the Earth’s atmosphere) will be seen coming off of the horizon (at the point called the “radiant”) and flying outward, grazing off of the upper atmosphere of Earth.
The activity of meteors grazing off of the upper atmosphere of the Earth is often compared to the action of a stones being skipped across the surface of a pond.
FYI: A meteor shower is simply an increase in the number of meteors at
a particular time of year over normal numbers. At these various times,
the Earth is traveling through one of many tails of comets that it
encounters on its constant voyages around the Sun.
Comets lose some of its debris when they get close to the Sun. The
icy-dusty debris eventually becomes a meteor shower that we see on
Earth when we travel through the comet’s tail.
Meteor showers are traditionally named by the constellation from which
meteors appear to originate in the night sky. For instance, the Perseid
meteor shower is named because its meteors appear to fall from a point
in the constellation Perseus.
Additional information on the best method to view the Perseids is found on page three.
