Perseid Meteors Peak August 11-12

[Centaur]

The annual Perseid meteor shower is expected to peak tonight, August 11-12. It’s usually the best one of the year for northern hemisphere sky watchers, with an average of about one meteor visible per minute by a keen eyed observer.

The worldwide maximum is expected around 13 hr UT (8 hr CDT) on August 12, however the ideal period for any location is between local midnight (midway between sunset and sunrise) and the beginning of morning twilight. Tonight during the wee hours of the morning a waning crescent Moon will rise, but it should not create much interference with meteor observation.

The meteor stream is a remnant of the comet Swift-Tuttle. Its radiant is in the constellation Perseus which will be in the northeastern sky. However the radiant is merely the point toward which meteor tails will be pointing. The meteors themselves can appear anywhere in the sky.

For my calendar of major meteor showers (including Moon info) through 2018, click: www.CurtRenz.com/asteroids

Observation reports would be welcome additions to this thread.

[antoniseb]

I saw quite a bunch of them on the night of the 7th, prior to everything clouding over.

[Noclevername]

The good news, no clouds here tonight (for a change). The bad news, I live near an airport, so plenty of light pollution and plenty of false positives.

[Noclevername]

Saw some, finally! It was awesome. I also, earlier, saw a few of what I thought were meteors but they turned out to be either planes or regular stars "moved" by an eye-twitch. Staying up til the wee hours does that to me.

[parejkoj]

Managed to convince the observers to let me out of the control room for a while, and sat under a tree with a good view to the north-east. From ~11pm to ~1pm local time (Mountain) we saw an average of one every 2 minutes or so. Some were pretty bright, but overall, the show was only so-so.

I did take a bunch of pictures with 60-second exposures, but didn't get a single meteor in any of them. On the other hand, I got this nice picture of the site. That's Sagittarius and the Milky Way on the right behind the 1m dome, the 2.5m Sloan Telescope (the "box" in the middle left), and the lights of El Paso, TX about 70 miles away in the far background.

http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/48...nt-observatory

C0D7838CF2A14AD899BC61E2179B67D5.jpg

[slang]

Saw a bunch, without even really trying, just while walking the dog and a few smoke breaks. One of them was a really short trail, and I'm sure I saw an afterglow. That was near Cassiopeia, figured it might have been a steep entry.

[LookingSkyward]

For once the clouds cooperated by being elsewhere, and we had great viewing till about midnight PDT when the we all got sleepy We counted over 60 in the hour we watched.