July
11, 2007: Got a calendar? Circle this date: Sunday,
August 12th. Next to the circle write "all night"
and "Meteors!" Attach the above to your
refrigerator in plain view so you won't miss the 2007 Perseid
meteor shower.
"It's
going to be a great show," says Bill Cooke of NASA's
Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight
Center. "The Moon is new on August 12th--which means
no moonlight, dark skies and plenty of meteors." How
many? Cooke estimates one or two Perseids per minute at the
shower's peak.
Above:
A Perseid fireball photographed August 12, 2006, by Pierre
Martin of Arnprior, Ontario, Canada. [Larger
image]
Note:
In the narrative that follows, all times are local. For instance,
9:00 pm means 9:00 pm in your time zone, where you live.
The
source of the shower is Comet Swift-Tuttle. Although the comet
is nowhere near Earth, the comet's tail does intersect Earth's
orbit.
We glide through it every year in August.
clipped from: science.nasa.gov 
