The Perseid meteor shower will reach its peak this week and it may be even more dazzling for stargazers than in years past.
The meteor shower dazzles the night skies every summer in the northern hemisphere, taking place from late July to mid-August. This year, the meteor shower will reach its peak on Wednesday and Thursday and should be visible to the naked eye across Ontario, experts say.
“These ones are fun to watch because, of course, what you’ll see is little grains of dust burning up in the atmosphere,” Elaina Hyde, director of the Allan I. Carswell Observatory at York University, said in an interview with CTV News, adding that the meteors leave bright red or green trails of light in their path.
The Perseids are debris left behind the Swift-Tuttle comet, which was named after the two people who discovered the comet in 1862: Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle. The comet has an orbit of 133 years and the last time it passed through the inner solar system was more than 30 years ago.
Hyde says 1992 would have been a brilliant meteor shower because the comet would have left a fresh trail behind it. But that’s not to say this year’s celestial event won’t be a sight to behold.
There will be a new moon during the Perseids, which is the first lunar phase and is considered its “invisible” stage. Since the illuminated side of the moon will be facing away, one astronomer says its light won’t drown out the fainter meteors.
“You’ll actually be able to see a greater number of the meteors because, when the moon is out, the fainter ones tend to get drowned by moonlight and you only see the brighter ones,” Ethen Sun, a graduate student in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Toronto, said in an interview with CTV News Toronto.
“Overall, it’s also a better stargazing night, so there’s other things to look at when you’re waiting for meteors.”
The Perseids shower between 50 and 100 meteors per hour, so Sun says any stargazer can expect to see something flash across the sky once every one or two minutes.
“It’s about four or five times the natural background rate that you would see on a regular night,” Sun said.
Where to see them
The further away from the city’s lights stargazers can be, the better vantage point they will have to view the Perseids.
“If you want to maximize the amount of meteors that you can see getting to a dark sky site away will be your best bet,” Hyde said.
That said, those who cannot get out of the city can head over to a dark park.
When looking for a place to view the shower, Hyde recommends using a red-tinted flashlight to make it easier on the eyes.
“If you let your eyes adapt to the dark, you’ll be able to see a lot more detail in the sky and having a red flashlight is actually much better for your night vision because red light doesn’t shock your eyes as much,” Hyde explained, adding that this meteor shower can be easily viewed with the naked eye.
Walter Stoddard, senior scientist at the Ontario Science Centre, says the best time to view the Perseids is from around midnight until dawn though the meteor shower peaks at 10:53 a.m. on Aug. 13.
“Also, this day has a few other things going for it, astronomically speaking, with a partial solar eclipse (total eclipse in Europe) and a planetary alignment happening to coincide for us this year,” Stoddard said in an email.
There is a very slim chance Torontonians will see the eclipse because the city is in one of the least obscured areas.
“Only eight per cent of the sun is obscured,” Hyde said. “No one’s going to notice it at all.”
