The Svábhegy Star Observatory announced that the Perseid meteor shower will peak next Monday, when most of the shooting stars will be visible in the sky.
The Perseid meteor shower will peak at 4 p.m. on August 12 this year, but it's worth spying the skies from Sunday evening onward. Svabygi ObservatoryAccording to experts, the largest number of meteors, at a rate of 75-100 meteors per hour, will be seen at dawn at the beginning of the week.
To observe the meteor shower, it is worth looking for a place away from light pollution, where the sky can be seen clearly. The announcement says that the moon will then be in its first quarter, so its light pollution will only moderately interfere with the observation process, and the luckiest people will see some beautiful glowing fireballs.
The Perseid meteor shower actually begins at the end of July, and after the peak of the phenomenon, meteors are seen less frequently each day until the end of August.
The Perseid meteors come from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. This comet orbits the sun every 133 years on average. Dust particles “blown” by the comet are distributed along the comet’s orbit and continue to orbit the sun at a speed similar to the comet’s. As Earth passes the comet’s orbit, the dust particles collide with Earth’s atmosphere. Because they are so fast, the small colliding objects ionize gas molecules in the upper atmosphere, creating a spectacular bright ion channel. They explained in the announcement that it can be seen from Earth as a shooting star from tens of kilometers away.
To observe the Perseids, the Svábhegy Observatory is organising a double observing evening as part of the Night of Shooting Stars event, which you can register for on the observatory's website.
More information about the meteor shower can be found in the Svábhegyi Star Observatory blog post, as summarized.
(Cover image: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Hungary)
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