Perseid Meteor Shower – Burning Issues – Free PDF Download

• What causes a meteor shower?

1. The orbit of the Earth
2. Comets
3. Debris
4. All of these

Meteoric Shower

• Cosmic debris.
• The debris is essentially the remnants of comets
• As the Earth wades through this cloud of comet waste, the bits of debris create what appears from the ground to be a fireworks display in the sky.

Perseid Meteor Shower

• Brightest and best known of them is the Perseid Meteor Shower, which has been active from July 17 onward, and can be seen until August 26.
• The showers peaked on the night of Monday-Tuesday.
• Earth runs into pieces of cosmic debris left behind by the comet SwiftTuttle.
• The cloud of debris is about 27 km wide

Visibility

• Meteors are best seen on a cloudless night
• Chances of a successful viewing are higher from locations far away from the lights of cities.
• The showers peak when the Earth passes through the most dense part of the debris cloud.
• Peaks can last for a few hours or several nights.
• The showers should be seen with naked eyes

Swift-Tuttle Comet

• The Perseids currently visible in the night sky are due to the debris left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle
• This particular comet goes around the Sun once in 133 years.

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