August 11, 2023 – Perseid Meteor Shower

The Perseid meteor shower peaks this weekend! This year, the shower will peak on the night of Saturday, August 12 and the morning of August 13. Peak activity should be around 4:00 Sunday morning, and you could see as many as 140 meteors streaking across the sky an hour!
The Perseids are associated with a comet called Swift-Tuttle. Comet Swift-Tuttle is a 16-mile wide body made up of dust, ice, rock, and organic material. It orbits the sun at a speed of 93,600 miles per hour – which sounds fast, but it actually takes 133 Earth years for it to fully orbit the sun. As Earth progresses through its orbit each year, it passes through the comet’s debris stream between July and August. When it does, the debris burns up in the atmosphere, causing shooting stars to stream across the night sky.
Comet Swift-Tuttle is the largest near-Earth object to cross our orbit and has been called “the single most dangerous object known to humanity”. Not to worry though! Experts do predict there will be a close encounter with Earth, but not until the year 3044.
The Perseids are considered to be the best meteor shower of the year, thanks to the pleasant summer temperatures and amount of activity in the sky. This year, the moon is a waning crescent, which means even some of the fainter meteors will be visible.
If you want to see the Perseids at their peak, but don’t want to get out of bed at 4 in the morning (I don’t blame you!) the Virtual Telescope Project is doing a live stream of the event, starting tomorrow at 9:30. Watch it here.
Learn more about the Perseids here. And there will be no Wiki Corner next week, as I am on vacation. But the Wiki Corner will return August 21!