Fireballs and shooting stars: Why Perseid meteor shower is so spectacular

If you're going to wake up at 4 a.m. to watch the Perseids meteor shower, you should at least know what you're looking at.

|
Jimmy Westlake/NASA/File
A perseid meteor streaks across a star-encrusted and cloud-scattered sky, Jan. 1, 2009. The Perseids, which peak during mid-August each year, are considered to be one of the best meteor showers.

The Perseid meteor shower happens every August, but this year is special: the coincidence of the annual meteor shower with a new moon this week means the shooting stars will stand out against a particularly dark backdrop. But what is a meteor shower to begin with?

First of all, the shooting stars we see streak across the sky are not really stars – they are meteoroids. The light that is visible to the eye is the trail of hot air left by a space rock falling toward Earth, according to NASA.

“A meteor is a space rock – or meteoroid – that enters Earth's atmosphere,” NASA says. “As the space rock falls toward Earth, the resistance – or drag – of the air on the rock makes it extremely hot. What we see is a ‘shooting star.’ That bright streak is not actually the rock, but rather the glowing hot air as the hot rock zips through the atmosphere.”

The meteors themselves are formed from particles left behind by asteroids and comets, and they enter our atmosphere when the earth passes through a trail of debris. The Perseids – named for the constellation Perseus, near which the meteors appear – come from the comet known as Swift-Tuttle. The Christian Science Monitor writes,

The space debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle streak into the Earth’s upper atmosphere at around 130,000 miles per hour, lighting up the night sky with swift-moving Perseid meteors. If our planet happens to pass through an unusually dense clump of comet debris, then an elevated number of meteors can be visible.

A hallmark of Perseids is its fireballs. Fireballs are larger explosions of light and color that can last longer and shine brighter than an average meteor streak, due to the fact that fireballs originate from larger particles of comet debris.”

According to NASA, the ideal day and time to watch this year’s Perseids meteor shower will be early Thursday morning at around 4 a.m. Eastern time. At that time, up to 100 meteors will be visible per hour.

Follow CSMonitor's board Astronomy on Pinterest.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Fireballs and shooting stars: Why Perseid meteor shower is so spectacular
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0811/Fireballs-and-shooting-stars-Why-Perseid-meteor-shower-is-so-spectacular
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe