Remember the excitement of gazing across the night sky, following the glittery trajectory of a shooting star? Did you make a wish before it burned out of existence? Want to see one meteor streak per minute?
Prepare to view hundreds of them over the next four days during the Perseid meteor shower. In the early morning hours of Sunday, August 11, through Wednesday, August 14, 2013, view this prolific meteor shower.
The maximum of the Perseid activity is expected during early morning of Monday, August 12. During the peak, the rate of meteors will reach 60 or more per hour.
The visible path of a meteoroid that enters Earth’s atmosphere is called a meteor, or colloquially a “shooting star” or “falling star.” It is followed by a trail of glowing gases. A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris, called meteoroids, entering Earth’s atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories. Most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand, so almost all of them disintegrate and never hit the Earth’s surface.