08/11/2022 19:57 (act 08/11/2022 19:57)
Annual Highlight Astro: The Perseids. ©Portal
Mainly clear skies and yet a disruptive factor: this weekend a stream of shooting stars in the night sky will reach its maximum.
The flow of Perseid peaked around three o’clock on Saturday morning, said the president of the Association of Friends of the Stars in Germany, Sven Melchert. While the weather on Saturday morning and the next few days usually allows for a clear view of the night sky, there is another disruptive factor. The peak of glowing cosmic debris occurs about 24 hours after the full moon — and so the light from Earth’s satellite disrupts the spectacle for onlookers.
look east
To see the Perseid swarm, the curious should look east, according to Star Friends. Stargazers can typically detect around 30 to 50 meteors per hour. However, the moonlit sky will only allow glimpses of this year’s brightest specimens. The Trabant stays above the horizon all night.
The Perseids appear to come from the constellation Perseus, but are a cloud of debris from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle that Earth dips into each year as it orbits the Sun. According to Friends of the Stars, the comet was independently discovered by Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle on July 19, 1862 and takes about 133 years to orbit the sun. The comet should be visible from Earth in 2126.