Meteor storms later in 2017

Unfortunately, a nearly-full moon will hamper observations of the Perseid meteor shower this year (close to 12th August) and the weather in north-west Europe is also not ideal. If you don’t see any Perseids this year, then you may wish to take a look at the International Meteor Organization’s calendar which lists all expected meteor shows for 2017 with comments as to the likely viewing conditions.

Meteor shows are in general due to dust particles shed by comets as they approached the sun on previous orbits. The Perseids are associated with comet Swift-Tuttle, a 27 km large body which last passed near Earth in 1992 and is not expected again until 2126. We see ‘shooting stars’ because the dust particles are traveling at about 60 km/s relative to the Earth, and this is fast enough that air friction heats the tiny dust particles to white heat in the upper atmosphere, about 90 km above us.

 

Space.com has posted a video showing early Perseids from this years shower, photographed by a NASA all-sky camera.

MiARD project