Washington: It has been predicted that Perseid meteor shower, an annual celestial event, will be held around August 12-13 in 2014 but this year it will also share the sky with full Moon light that might hide many of the fainter meteors.
Alan MacRobert, a senior editor at Sky and Telescope, said that this year the Moon would be just two days past full on the peak night, so moonlight would fill the sky that would hide many of the fainter meteors but the bright ones will still shine through, Sky and Telescope magazine reported.
A recent NASA analysis of all-sky images taken from 2008 to 2013 shows that the Perseids deliver more bright meteors (those that outshine any star) than any other annual meteor shower. An occasional Perseid might catch people`s attention early in the evening, but the prime viewing hours are from about 11 p.m. or midnight (local time) until the first light of dawn.
To enjoy the Perseids, people don`t need any equipment just find a dark spot with a wide-open view overhead. The Perseid meteors appear to fly away from the shower`s "radiant" point near the border of Perseus and Cassiopeia. This would be the perspective point where they would all appear to be coming from if people could see them approaching in the far distance. In fact they could only be seen in the last second or two as they streak into Earth`s upper atmosphere and this could happen anywhere in your sky.
Meteors are caused by tiny, sand- to pea-size bits of dusty debris streaking into the top of Earth`s atmosphere about 80 miles up. Each Perseid particle zips in at 37 miles (60 km) per second, creating a quick, white-hot streak of superheated air. These particular bits were shed long ago by Comet Swift-Tuttle. They are now distributed all along the comet`s orbit around the Sun. Earth passes through this tenuous "river of rubble" every year in mid-August.
