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Perseids Meteor Shower To Shimmer Over UK

Jazzy

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This year's Perseids meteor shower promises up to 60 shooting stars an hour being visible in the skies over the UK.

The spectacle is expected to peak between late Monday evening and early Tuesday morning.

And the prospects for this year's showing are deemed to be particularly good, especially for stargazers in the UK, according to the Royal Astronomical Society.

The natural phenomenon - the result of the cosmic pollution created by the comet Swift-Tuttle which last passed near the Earth in 1992 - is expected to be visible to the unaided eye.

"Comet Swift-Tuttle won't be visiting our neck of the woods again until the year 2125, but every year we get this beautiful reminder as the Earth ploughs through the debris it leaves in its orbit" said Professor Alan Fitzsimmons of Queen's University Belfast.

"Every meteor is a speck of comet dust vaporising as it enters our atmosphere at 36 miles per second. What a glorious way to go."

Meteors, commonly known as shooting stars, are the result of small particles entering the Earth's atmosphere at high speed.

These heat the air around them, causing the characteristic streak of light seen from the ground.

They mostly appear as fleeting flashes lasting less than a second, but the brightest ones leave behind trails of vaporised gases and glowing air molecules that may take a few seconds to fade.

The Perseids meteor shower is active each year from around mid-July to late-August, but for most of that period only a few meteors an hour will be visible.

Source

I hope I can see this! :)
 
Will they be shown from anywhere in the UK? Even Scotland? If so, I'm dying to see this. I was unlucky with this year's supermoon that was shown in the country earlier this year.
 
Nanashi said:
Will they be shown from anywhere in the UK? Even Scotland? If so, I'm dying to see this. I was unlucky with this year's supermoon that was shown in the country earlier this year.
The meteors will probably fall most abundantly – from anyplace worldwide – from about 2 a.m. until dawn on Monday, August 12. But this weekend, through Tuesday morning (August 13), should feature good meteor displays, too.

This link will tell you where to look in the sky for them.
 
I usually miss these sorts of things. I probably missed out on this one too.
 
Didn't see any meteor shower last night... boo. Unless it appeared elsewhere in the UK. I don't know.
 
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