A Good Year for the Perseids

Those of you whom have known me for any length of time know that I a) ultimately majored in Astronomy in college, and b) learned that I was no astronomer, but a poet. Equations just don't work in dreams. Metaphors are only marginally useful in ... wait a minute ... I said all this last month. I also reminded you that c) most of all the real astronomy I did - and there wasn't that much - was in the form of meteor astronomy. Okay, so that's old news (it's also cheating, because these articles must be no less than 400 words in length; I've just used up 108 of those words.) I'm repeating myself because we are coming up on the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, and it falls only 4 days prior to the New Moon.

By now, you all know the basics: a dark sky well away from the profane glare of artificial illumination, wait until after midnight to start your meteor watch, and hang around until dawn because that is when the Perseid radiant is highest and that is when you are likely to see the most meteors. This year that predawn sky is decorated with a thin sliver of a moon, bright, shiny Venus, and Saturn. And of course the beautiful winter constellations herald the impending sunrise.

The peak is predicted for about 13:00U.T. on the 12th, which is no guarantee, but the experts have gotten pretty good at it. This translates to 9:00A.M. for the east coast of North America, where observers would see the build-up to the peak, and 6:00 A.M. for the west coast, where near-peak rates would fall through the brightening sky of dawn.

One professional astronomer has indicated that the Earth will pass within 0.0012 Astronomical Units (A.U.) of the 1862 dust trail of parent comet Swift-Tuttle on the 11th, at 20:54U.T. This might mean an outburst of meteors at that time. While it might seem like incentive to spend the night on your back, scanning the constellations for meteors, you should be out there anyway: I'm a stern task master. (0.0012 A.U., by the way, translates to about 111,600 miles, or just across the street in astronomical terms.)

The predicted time for this year's peak is for the "traditional" peak, which was the only peak in town until 1991. Beginning in that year, and continuing through the 1998 Perseids, there was a new, earlier peak, which became the primary peak. It seems to be a thing of the past now, but should it spring to life, this earlier peak would fall at about 11:00U.T. on the 12th. A third peak, which was observed in 1997, '98, and '99, should it occur again, would happen at about 21:00U.T. on the 12th.

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