Astro Events - Maintained by Roz Reiner

Title:	Perseid Meteor Showers
Location:	Hawaiian Island Viewing
Date / Time:	Aug. 11th-12th, Midnight
Comments:	The Perseid Meteor Shower is expected to peak the evening of Monday-Tuesday, August 11-12. The best time to view the meteors ("shooting stars") is after 11:30 PM on Monday night & especially after the Moon sets at around 2:00 AM Tuesday morning. The Perseids typically produce lots of bright meteors, many leaving luminous trails visible for several seconds. These are fast meteors with a velocity of about 36 miles/sec or 130,000 miles/hour! We can expect to see between 60 & 100 meteors per hour from a dark, clear viewing site. Perseid meteors appear to originate or "radiate" from the constellation Perseus, "the hero" which will be rising in the Northeast at around 11:30 (HST). Activity increases during the early morning hours when Perseus is overhead & the Earth turns skywatchers into the oncoming stream of comet debris. Note that the meteors are visible to the naked eye; no special equipment is required. (A reclining chair perhaps?) Meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through the path of a comet. The bits of debris left behind by the comets, most no larger than a grain of sand, create a spectacular light show as they enter the Earth's atmosphere. The Perseids' parent comet is 109/P Swift-Tuttle, which last visited our region of the Solar System in 1992. It returns to orbit the Sun approximately every 130 years.

Maintained by Roz Reiner - Kauai, Hawaii