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Meteor Shower


Skacel

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Anyone stay up and watch the meteor shower last night?

I sat out in my garden, cracked open a beer, stuck the ipod on and stared at the sky for about an hour, saw some pretty spectacular "shooting stars".

Apparently this meteor shower happens every year when the earth passes through debris from the Swift-Tuttle comet.

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Stargazers dazzled by meteor show

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  • 11 months later...

Hi Skacel,

Good that you enjoyed watching the meteors last night.

The Perseids meteor shower is annual event and as you say it is due to very small particles of debris that trail behind the Swift Tuttle Comet. this comet comes pretty close to Earth and many scientist predict it is on a collision course to hit us in the year 4479 so need to lose any sleep tonight worrying about a sudden and severe impact.

Far better to lose sleep by staying up late and getting yourself to a location where there are no street lights. I am fortunate to live in a village with no street lighting and last nights display was excellent and it will continue for another five nights.

The peak for viewing shooting stars should be on Thursday night. Every night until the 13th will be good for seeing this spectacular natural display.

The trail is caused by small particles entering our upper atmosphere where they burn up and glow. The longer the trail - the bigger the particle.

Start by looking towards the north east at an elevation of about 50 degrees they will appear to emanate from the constellation known as Perseus . Tonight there should be between 50 and 60 meteors visible every hour until dawn. Just before dawn the apparent radiant point will have moved to appear to be almost overhead.

We are fortunate this year to have a very dark sky as we do not have a full moon.

This link is to a picture that shows two natural phenomena a meteor trail crossing a night sky that is already lit up by a display caused by the aurora borealis but that is another story.

http://www.aberdeen-music.com/galleries/showimage.php?i=16532&c=member&imageuser=5210

and of course when Jack Hammer wrote the lyrics for "Great Balls of Fire" - he was refering to meteors too.

http://www.aberdeen-music.com/galleries/showimage.php?i=16531&catid=member&imageuser=5210

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I'm going to go out tonight and see if I can see anything as it's quite clear.

I'm out Culter way too, not as far as Crathes but if you head out along the road to Banchory I'm sure there will be some decent locations with hardly any light pollution.

Actually I reckon along the railway line or river would be a decent place to watch it, I don't imagine there would be (m)any shaders down there...

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lots of meteors last night. About one trail every minute - sometimes a couple together. Hope it a cloudless night tomorrow for Dave's photographic expedition.

having just polished off a fairly ridiculous burger i may not be able to move very far! seems to be a good few gaps in the cloud so hoping for some good trails tonight.

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