Want to catch the 2024 Perseid meteor shower? Here’s your best shot.For the past couple days, if you headed outside after sunset and happened to look up at the sky on a clear night, you might have been able to witness the annual production of the Perseids. If you didn’t, don’t fret, there’s still plenty of time and the show just started. The Perseids are expected to reach their peak on the night of August 11. And here at Popular Science we’re answering all the questions you might have about the upcoming display. Let’s dive right in.
Where can I see the Perseids?
According to EarthSky, the moon will be a 1st quarter and 50% illuminated. Perseids rise to a peak gradually and then fall pretty quickly. They also tend to strengthen in numbers as the night turns into the early hours of the morning.
This meteor shower is also often best seen before dawn and these meteors are often colorful. With a dark sky with no moon, up to 90 meteors per hour are possibly visible. This year, the light from the waning crescent moon will not interfere with Perseids
What’s the difference between a meteor shower and a normal shower?
A shower is something in your home that you stand in and that pours water all over you whenever you need to be clean.
A meteor shower is something that happens when innumerable tiny remnants of comets and asteroids slam into the Earth’s atmosphere. The speeding lumps of dust and ice and rock are no match for the dense bubble of air that surrounds our planet (which we call the atmosphere), and as they hurtle towards the ground that they will never reach, they burn up in a glorious blaze that streaks through the heavens.
Where do the Perseids get their name from?
When you look up at the night sky during the Perseids, bright shooting points of light will appear to stream out of the constellation Perseus. They’re not emerging from the constellation itself, it’s just that the point in the sky where the meteors come from (known as the radiant if you want to impress your friends) happens to line up with the constellation Perseus. People have observed the Perseids for thousands of years, with written records of the event dating back to 36 CE.
What causes the Perseids?
The meteors that make up the Perseids are the dusty remnants left behind by Comet 109P Swift-Tuttle. Like a pet particularly prone to shedding, Swift-Tuttle leaves behind tiny bits of itself as it ambles along through the solar system, particularly when it’s near our star, and its solid, icy surface heats up, sublimating into a gas. You can tell where it’s been in the inner solar system because it leaves a veritable cloud of itself behind, but instead of dander and hair, it’s ice and dust. It sheds these in a beautiful glow that tails behind the comet, called the coma that appears as the comet gets close to the sun. After the nucleus or solid heart of the comet has passed by, the dust and ice remain.
