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A reminder for tonight’s Perseid meteor shower in UK

Fingers crossed we get a clear sky tonight. This annual Perseid meteor shower is something we’d really like to see again! It’s been a few years since we saw it for the first and only time. It was fascinating seeing the meteors flashing through the night sky – quite a spectacle! I strongly recommend this as a must see 😀

There are many stunning images of the Perseids online but the one, I like, below is the closest to the sight we witnessed from our garden (without the warm glow). I might attempt photos if we get a clear sky tonight but I am no way remotely proficient enough in night photography so don’t expect a blog with my images 😉

The image shown above of a Perseid meteor shower (August 2009),
taken in Austin Texas, is not my work. It was available at Wikipedia.
This image was originally posted to Flickr by jaredten

Wonderfully there is no special equipment required to see the meteors as this is a sky event that you can see with the naked eye. I’ll leave it to the experts at The Royal Astronomical Society to tell you all about it and what you might expect to see…

The evening of 12 August and morning of 13 August see the annual maximum of the Perseids meteor shower. This year prospects for watching this natural firework display are particularly good.

Meteors (popularly 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. For the Perseids the material comes from the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle, which last passed near the Earth in 1992. This shower of meteors appears to originate from a ‘radiant’ in the constellation of Perseus, hence the name.

The shower is active each year from around 17 July to 24 August, although for most of that period only a few meteors an hour will be visible. From the UK the best time to see the Perseids shower is likely to be from late evening on 12 August to the morning of 13 August, when as many as 60 meteors an hour may be seen. This year prospects for the shower are relatively good, as the Moon is a waxing crescent and from most of the UK will have set by 2230 BST, meaning that its light will not interfere significantly with the view.

Unlike many celestial events, meteor showers are straightforward to watch and for most people, the best equipment to use is simply your own eyes. Advice from longstanding meteor observers is to wrap up well and set up a reclining chair to allow you to look up at the sky in comfort. If possible it also helps to be in a dark site away from artificial light and have an unobstructed view of the sky.

Although the number of visible meteors is hard to predict accurately, you can expect to see one at least every few minutes. They mostly appear as fleeting streaks of light 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.

Perseid meteors to light up summer skies

Wishing you clear skies and a fun night viewing 🙂

This post was published by Shirley for shirls gardenwatch in August 2013.

6 thoughts on “A reminder for tonight’s Perseid meteor shower in UK

  1. Thank you so much. I had completely forgotten about the Meteor Shower. I will be outside Slug Hunting as usual around 11pm and must remember to look up. Thanks again. Marion x

  2. Hi there, Marion – delighted I reminded you here 🙂 Hoping your sky was clear enough – did you get good views of the shower?

    By the time it was dark up our way, our window before cloud patched over was short – we did see a few shooting stars though. Would love to have seen more. Woke up during the night just before 3:30am and took a look out window but still patchy cloud then too. Ah well… it's still an exciting event 😀

  3. As with everything in Italy this event is associated with a saint, San Lorenzo. So it is usual for people to go out to look for shooting stars; we were lucky to see a largish one, like in your image on Sunday evening; but we were distressed to realise that the light pollution has become a problem, when we first moved to the house 6 years ago the sky was wonderfully dark and filled with stars. Christina

  4. Thanks for the timely reminder Shirl. Sadly cloudy and then heavy showers here from yesterday evening onwards. We did see some lights though from a police helicopter hovering overhead about midnight 🙂

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