Astroblog: Perseids in the Morning 2008

Monday, August 11, 2008

Perseids in the Morning 2008

The northern horizon as seen from Brisbane or Alice Springs around 4.00 am on Wednesday 13 August, the best time for us southern hemisphere types to see it. The stylized meteors are greatly exaggerated in brightness, they will be much dimmer than that. People living north of Brisbane or Alice Springs (eg Darwin) will get a much better view.

The Perseids are a reliable northern hemisphere meteor shower where observers may see about a meteor a minute. In the Australia, the point of origin of the shower lies very close to the horizon, below it if you are south of Brisbane. Thus we will see far fewer, possibly a meteor every 10 minutes or so (maybe one every 5 minutes in Darwin).

Nonetheless, even though we see few meteors, the sight of the occasionally meteor streaking up form the horizon is fantastic. So if you rug up and go out between 3.00 am and 5.00 am and look to the north, you may see something nice (and the Pleiades and Hyades will be good to look at as well, and there is an ISS pass later in the morning).

Labels: Meteors

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 7:27 pm

Comments:

Between 4.00 and 5.00 am, near Geelong: fcekin' cold. Bit of moisture in the air, so sky unusually bright (light pollution from nearby cities). Spotted a couple of brief Perseid-like flashes, hurrah. Thanks for the timely alerts :-)

# posted by