We’re into the Perseid meteor shower season, with its peak slated to take place during the night of Aug. 11 and extending before dawn on Aug. 12.
Assuming there are clear skies, Northern Ontario folks should be able to view the meteor shower clearly after midnight, when the moon disappears.
So described Dr. Hoi Cheu, a Laurentian University professor and the director of the Doran Planetarium.
“You want to make sure you have open space in the northeast,” he said, recommending such spaces as conservation areas and the Laurentian University greenspaces to view the showers.
The meteor shower will be most visible when looking northeast, as it appears it’s coming from the Perseus constellation, hence its name.
The Perseid meteor shower is an annual occurrence taking place every summer, increasing in intensity around the time of its annual peak — a bell curve whose pinnacle is Aug. 11/12, when more than 100 meteors can be seen per hour.
With no moon visible on Aug. 4, Cheu said that’ll be another good time to view the Perseid meteor shower.
“It’s only really beautiful when the moon is gone,” he said, noting that people in much of Northern Ontario could look outside any night during the summers and likely view what’s colloquially known as shooting stars (meteors).
(Since many people make wishes on shooting stars, Cheu said there are plenty of chances during the summer months.)
This year’s Perseid meteor showers are good, he said, but the big show will take place in 2028, when what’s considered a meteor storm will take place.
This, Cheu said, is likely to garner more attention than this year’s storm.
NASA explains the annual meteor shower as being part of the debris stream of the comet Swift-Tuttle, which was discovered in 1862 and takes 133 years to orbit the Sun once. It last reached perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) in 1992 and will return in 2125.
“When comets come around the Sun, the dust they emit gradually spreads into a dusty trail around their orbits,” according to NASA. “Every year, the Earth passes through these debris trails, which allows the bits to collide with our atmosphere where they disintegrate to create fiery and colourful streaks in the sky.”
Swift-Tuttle is approximately 26 kilometres across, making it more than twice the size of the object theorized to have killed the dinosaurs.
According to Space.com, the comet’s pass by Earth in 3044 could bring it within a million miles of the planet, which is more than twice the distance between Earth and its moon.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.