We are entering the full season of the Perseid meteor shower

We are in the season of the Perseid meteor shower, with its peak scheduled to occur on the night of August 11th and extending before dawn on August 12th.

Assuming clear skies, locals should be able to clearly see the meteor shower after midnight when the moon disappears.

This is how Dr. Hoi Cheu, professor at Laurentian University and director of the Doran Planetarium, described it.

“You want to make sure you have open space in the northeast,” he said, recommending such spaces as conservation areas and Laurentian University’s green spaces to view the showers.

The meteor shower will be most visible when looking to the northeast, as it appears to originate in the constellation Perseus, hence the name.

The Perseid meteor shower is an annual occurrence that occurs every summer, increasing in intensity around the annual peak period – a bell curve that peaks on August 11 and 12, when more than 100 meteors can be seen per hour.

With no moon visible on Aug. 4, Cheu said it will be another good time to see the Perseid meteor shower.

“It’s only really beautiful when the moon disappears,” he said, noting that people in Greater Sudbury could look outside any night during the summers and likely see what are known as shooting stars (meteors).

(Because many people wish on shooting stars, Cheu said there are plenty of chances during the summer months.)

This year’s Perseid meteor shower is good, he said, but the big show will be in 2028, when what is believed to be a meteor storm will occur.

That, Cheu said, is likely to attract more attention than this year’s storm, for which he said he is not aware of any special event happening locally.

NASA explains the annual meteor shower as part of the debris stream of Comet Swift-Tuttle, which was discovered in 1862 and takes 133 years to orbit the Sun once. Ultima last reached perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) in 1992 and will return in 2125.

“As comets come around the Sun, the dust they emit gradually spreads out in a dust trail around their orbits,” according to NASA. “Each year, Earth passes through these debris trails, which allows fragments to collide with our atmosphere, where they disintegrate to create fiery, colorful streaks across the sky.”

Swift-Tuttle is about 16 miles in diameter, making it more than twice the size of the object theorized to have killed the dinosaurs.

According to Space.com, the comet’s flyby in 3044 could bring it within a million miles of the planet, which is more than twice the distance between Earth and the Moon.