The Perseid meteor shower is kind of like the cosmos’ version of Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park.
The predictably spectacular event runs from mid-July to late August every year as the planet goes through the bits of ice and rock left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle, which last passed close to Earth in 1992.
“It is a great time of the year for people in the northern hemisphere to lie out in the summertime and watch meteors,” said WSU astronomer Guy Worthey. “2024 should be a good year for the Perseids.”
The meteors will peak the night and early morning of Aug. 11–12 when the planet moves through the thickest dust clouds created by Swift-Tuttle, which is the largest object known to regularly pass by Earth. This year, sky-gazers can expect to see up to 100 meteors per hour from around midnight on Aug. 11 when the moon sets till the dawn hours of Aug. 12.
Comets streak across the night sky at at 37 miles per second, leaving a vivid path in their wake. When someone sits back to watch a meteor shower, Worthey said they are seeing the pieces of comet debris heat up as they enter the atmosphere and then burst in a bright flash of light. Most of the Perseids are tiny, about the size of a grain of sand. They are typically visible when they are about 60 miles from the ground. Almost none of the fragments hit the ground, but if one does, it’s called a meteorite.
Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate from. From Earth’s perspective, the Perseids appear to come approximately from the direction of the Northern Hemisphere constellation Perseus, named after the Greek mythic hero who beheaded the gorgon Medusa.
“Perseus is a constellation that in August will rise above the horizon around midnight,” Worthey said. “If you trace back the trajectory of all the meteors you see on the night of Aug. 12, the lines will appear to intersect in the constellation. It looks a little like the famous scene in Star Wars when the millennium falcon goes into lightspeed.”
