The annual Perseid meteor shower will peak overnight Saturday (Aug. 12), and skywatchers can catch the celestial event at its most lively from the comfort of their homes.
The Virtual Telescope Project will provide a view of the Perseids’ peak using its all-sky camera from its facility in Manciano, Italy. The distant region offers the right dark skies wherein to see the famous Perseid meteors.
“We will likely be covering the Perseid meteor shower, sharing it continue to exist the night of its peak online!” Virtual Telescope Project founder and astronomer Gianluca Masi said in an email to Space.com. “This 12 months, the sky conditions will likely be good, with almost no moon interference. We will likely be taking images from our facility in Manciano, within the Maremma countryside, under one in every of the darkest skies in Italy.”
The free online live stream will start at 9:30 p.m. EDT on Saturday (01:30 GMT on Sunday), coinciding with the height of the meteor shower. You may watch the livestream here on Space.com courtesy of the Virtual Telescope Project or directly on their WebTV page or YouTube channel.
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The annual Perseid meteor shower is lively between July 17 and Aug. 24, in line with the Royal Museums Greenwich. The Perseid shower is usually a highlight within the calendar of meteor hunters across the globe because it will probably produce as much as 100 meteors per hour and creates brilliant fireballs and impressive shooting star displays.
The meteor show is known as the Perseids since the radiant — the purpose the meteors appear to stream to Earth from — is positioned within the constellation of Perseus.
The origin of the Perseids is a cloud of debris left within the inner solar system by the Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. Earth wades through this debris of ice and rock fragments every summer because it orbits the sun.
These fragments enter Earth’s atmosphere at speeds as great as 130,000 mph (209,000 kph), about 85 times the highest speed of a jet fighter! This causes the air in front of the debris to be compressed and heated to 1000’s of degrees. In consequence, larger fragments of rock and ice explode as fireballs; smaller pieces of 109P/Swift-Tuttle are vaporized more steadily and leave a trail of sunshine of their wake as they streak through the atmosphere.
When you are hoping to catch a take a look at the Perseids meteor shower for yourself, our guides to the best telescopes and binoculars are an ideal place to start out.
When you’re trying to snap photos of the meteor shower or the night sky basically, try our guide on easy methods to photograph meteor showers, in addition to our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography.