'Great Show': Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks Sunday Night

[Evo]

Don't forget, tonight is supposed to be awesome. Unfortunately civilisation has crept up on me so there is always light and my idiot neighbors keep all their outdoor lights on, so I will probably see nothing.

'Great Show': Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks Sunday Night

The annual Perseid meteor shower is expected to be at its best this year, producing one or two meteors per minute during peak hours.

According to the best estimates, in 2007 the Earth is predicted to cut through the densest part of the Perseid stream sometime around 2 a.m. ET on Monday, Aug. 13. That corresponds to 11 p.m. PT on Aug. 12 for those living in the Western United States or Canada.


The interval when the meteors will be falling at their highest rates will likely last several hours or more on either side of these times.


As a result, it is the late-night hours Sunday, on through the first light of dawn Monday that holds the greatest promise of seeing a very fine Perseid display.


The moon, whose bright light almost totally wrecked last year's shower, will have zero impact this year. The moon will be new on Sunday, meaning that there will be no interference from it at all.


Perfect!

What to expect

A very good shower will produce about one meteor per minute for a given observer under a dark country sky. Any light pollution or moonlight considerably reduces the count.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070811/sc_space/greatshowperseidmeteorshowerpeakssundaynight

 

[G01]

My area is pretty light polluted, but hopefully I'll be able to see something! Thanks for the reminder, Evo.

 

[hypatia]

Grrrr@ neighbor who refused to turn off the outside lights for even a few hours! And I worked too long today to even think of taking a drive out to the countryside:zzz:

 

[moose]

Out of the 3 friends I called, none of them wanted to go in the middle of nowhere to watch this thing... Oh well, I'll just go in my backyard and see how it goes.

I will never forget the amazing Leonid shower some years ago.

 

[Integral]

Well, I missed the heart of it but did walk to the edge of the site. Lots of Sodium lights to the west of me, but I had a pretty good view to the east. In about a 1/2 hr I saw several small meteors, one of which just kept going, it must have traversed a 1/3 of the sky, but was never very bright. I did see 3 very nice bright meteors in the 30min I had. I did not go out to look until nearly 2am PDT.

 

[Kurdt]

Theres a load of light pollution where I am but I did manage to see one of the brighter ones.

 

[robphy]

I saw about three during a 5 minute period very early pre-dawn Sunday... in spite of all of the small-city lights and the haze. Unfortunately, the usual cloud cover returned on Sunday nght/Monday morning.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I only saw a single meteor. It was bright and variable. That is, the streak was bright at the two ends and faint in the middle, with a very bright portion about 3/4 of the way. Light polution where I live is pretty bad. Even so, a few years ago I saw about 2 or 3 a minute. I thought the show was called off last night.