Perseids 2020
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The annual Perseid meteor shower has just been picked, but it’s not too late to see one of the famous “shooting stars” in the night sky – as in a live webcast.
Although the best time to view the shower was early in the morning (August 12), with rates of more than 50 visible meteors per hour, some Perseid meteors will continue for about two weeks on skies of the Northern Hemisphere. But the sooner you see, the better, because the number of visible lines through the day will be petrified.
If cloudy skies or city lights prevent you from enjoying the Perseids at their best, you can still see the sky show live online, thanks to a free webcast from the Slooh online observatory. Slooh is streaming live views of the Perseids today at 7pm EDT (2300 GMT), and you can watch it live here on Space.com, with Slooh’s approval.
The general public will be able to watch this event for free on Space.com and on Slooh’s YouTube channel, while paid Slooh members can join the “Star Party” via Zoom for an interactive chat with Slooh experts. (Slooh’s annual membership fees start at $ 50.)
Related: Perseid meteor shower 2020: When, where & how to see it
Video courtesy of Slooh. Visit Slooh.com to snap and share your own photos of this live event, and interact with our hosts and guests, and personally control Slooh’s telescopes.
“The Perseids are usually the most popular meteor shower of the year,” Slooh astronomer Paul Cox said in a statement. Slooh members gather from all over the world to watch the live feeds in awe and marvel as fragments of comet 109P / Swift-Tuttle evaporate spectacularly as they enter Earth’s atmosphere traveling at a staggering 133,200 mph (60 km per second)! “
Slooh’s four-hour webcast will provide live video footage of the meteor shower of low-light cameras at observers around the world, including the Canary Islands Astrophysics Institute and the Sharjah Academy of Astronomy, Space Sciences and Technology in the United Arab Emirates, Slooh officials said in the same statement.
If you miss Slooh’s Perseid “Star Party”, you can also check out other recorded videos from NASA’s meteor shower and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Today, ESA has released a new video of the Perseids taken prisoner by the Canary Long-Baseline Observatory (CILBO) in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. The observation cameras Large Field of View-intensified camera, called LIC1, captured 61 meteors – 45 of which were Perseids – in one night during the peak of the shower overnight on 11-12 August.
The night before, CILBO discovered 37 meteors, of which about half were Perseids, ESA said in a statement.
Separate meteors are pieces and pieces of Comet Swift-Tuttle, which leaves a trail of “comet crumbs” as it travels through the solar system; the other 16 meteors in ESA’s video are waste from comets other than asteroids. Perseids seem to have arisen from the constellation of Perseus.
Three nights before the peak, on August 8-9, NASA’s All-Sky Fireball Network captured some early Perseid meteors that struck overhead. The All-Sky Fireball Network consists of 17 cameras spread across the United States that follow light meteors, known as fireballs.
Editor’s note: If you’m snapping a great photo or video of 2020 Perseid meteor shower and would like to share it with Space.com for a possible story or gallery, send pictures and comments to [email protected].
Email Hanneke Weitering via [email protected] or follow her @hannekescience. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
