Perseid meteor showers peaks Monday night

[Theophilus]

Stargazers may have a great night for watching meteors Monday night into Tuesday morning as the Perseid meteor shower hits its peak.

The Perseids are tiny specks of dust from the tail of the Comet Swift-Tuttle. Amazingly, Swift-Tuttle is currently beyond the planet Uranus, more than 1.6 billion miles from Earth, but its debris cloud stretches back through Earth's orbit around the sun.

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The show will begin shortly after 9 p.m. in the east-northeastern sky with a few "earthgrazers" possible right along the horizon.

Earthgrazers are meteors that skip off of the top of the atmosphere, yielding a long, slow meteor that stretches over a long distance.

Experts caution that you may only see a few earthgrazers in an hour, but even one can make the night of viewing worthwhile.

For the more avid meteor watchers, wait until the bright moon sets at 1:43 a.m. This will give sky-watchers the darkest backdrop to see the most meteors possible.

LINK

No telescopes or binoculars required and actually best viewed with the naked eye.

[megimoo]

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LINK

No telescopes or binoculars required and actually best viewed with the naked eye.

I saw these late one night on my way home.They began and after a while I had to pull over to the side of the road just to watch.The display was amazing in full broadside of the numbers and the brightness of the display.