THE PERSEIDS ARE COMING!
by Rich Hood

The best time for viewing this meteor shower will come between 9pm an 11pm local time. The moon will be low in the northern sky. This will help reduce the glare from a 55% moon. This should give us a nice display of earthgrazers.Earthgrazers are meteors that approach from the horizon and skim the atmosphere overhead. These meteors leave long slow colorful across the sky. You won't see alot of them, but they can make a night of watching worth while. In medieval Europe, this meteor display became known as the fiery "Tears of St. Lawrence".
 The Perseids are simply dust-sized pieces of icy debris expelled from a comet, in this case, Comet Swift-Tuttle. 

Picture courtesy of Sky and Telescope!

                Above: Looking northeast around midnight on August 11th-12th. The red dot is the Perseid radiant. Although Perseid meteors can appear in any part of the sky, all of their tails will point back to the radiant Image copyright: Spaceweather.com used with permission      
        The PERSEIDS will peak between Midnight an 4am when the earth passes thorough the thickest part of the tail, an the darkest part of the night. We will miss alot of the show because the Moon will be high in the sky an will wash out all but the brightest of the meteors. Try not to look directly at the moon as this will wash out your night vision.      
        For those planet watchers Juipter rises after dark in the southeastern part of the sky anis visable all night. Mars rises after 1am in the northeastern sky an is visable till dawn.