Worth Staying Up
NASA alerts me that the upcoming Perseids meteor shower, on 12 August, may be particularly good this year, largely because it's the evening of the full moon:
"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.
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. Tiny bits of comet dust hit Earth's atmosphere traveling 132,000 mph. At that speed, even a smidgen of dust makes a vivid streak of light–a meteor–when it disintegrates. Because Swift-Tuttle's meteors [appear to] fly out of the constellation Perseus, they are called "Perseids."
[More information.] The Perseids I always think of as the best meteor shower of the year — although that may be because it's the only one I ever remember to stay up for. Regardless, it's on my calendar already.
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on Tuesday, 24 July 2007 at 17.52
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Umm, I think you mean it's a new moon (as the quote says) rather than a full moon. A full moon, of course, would make it harder to see the meteor shower, not easier. A picky nit, no doubt, but hey, I'm an editor!