By mid-August the Perseid meteor shower should let loose its dazzling display of falling stars for all you wishful astronomers
There’s this one childhood memory in the dark recesses of my mind: the immense deep-blue sky above Ordzhonikidze, a tiny
settlement between Feodosiya and Koktebel. The stars are shooting across the darkening celestial canvas, and the sight of it made me want to stay in the place forever. There are few things that can compare to the beauty of that southern, star-filled sky on a summer night.
This summer, as every other year, Crimea is just the right place to watch meteor showers. These occur as the earth travels through the stream of dusty debris shed by a comet along its path around the sun. Traveling at a great speed, most of this debris (meteoroids) burns up in the upper layers of the earth’s atmosphere, but a few make it through, leaving a bright flash across the night sky. These are meteors, or “shooting stars.”
The earth meets a stream of meteoroids in a particular place, in the vicinity of a constellation from where the meteors appear to fall. This spot in the sky, also known as a radiant, gives its name to the meteor showers that can be observed periodically during the year.
In August our planet passes through the debris stream of the Swift-Tuttle comet, resulting in the Perseid meteor shower. The “shooting stars” will appear in the constellation Perseus, east from the W-shaped Cassiopeia constellation that is easily recognizable in the north-eastern part of the night sky.
The Perseids are going to be visible for a month, starting from July 20, when the Earth entered the debris stream of the comet. According to astronomers, the shower reaches its maximum extent on Aug. 12. That’s when the star-fall will be at its most intense, with up to 100 meteors per hour piercing the atmosphere at 60 kilometers per second.
To view a meteor shower in the proper way, find a dark, secluded spot far from the bright lights of cars, city streets and cafes. It is important that nothing ruin your sensitive night vision as your eyes adapt to the dark, so try to stay outdoors and away from electric lights from dusk onward, if possible. Position yourself more or less horizontally so that the sky entirely fills your field of view. If you can see the stars of Ursa Minor (the Little Dipper) clearly, you have adapted to the dark enough to be able to spot the meteorites streaking through the atmosphere.
Now watch for those falling stars, and make your wish.
