The Perseid meteor shower, one of the best celestial treats of the year, will be visible in night skies throughout Colorado in early August.
The meteors will decorate the night sky Aug. 10 聳 14, peaking on Aug. 12 when as many as 50 meteors per hour could be visible, according to experts at the Fiske Planetarium at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
"You may not see meteors as soon as you step outside on Aug. 12, but after about 20 minutes your eyes should become accustomed to the darkness allowing you to enjoy quite a show," said Geoff Skelton, program supervisor at CU-Boulder聮s Fiske Planetarium.
The best way to view the meteor shower is to get away from city lights and set up a lawn chair facing northeast where the constellation Perseus will be visible. "Make sure to recline back as far as you comfortably can," Skelton said. "This way you聮ll be able to take in the widest possible section of the sky."
Weather permitting, viewers should see meteors flashing over the entire sky, and the darker the sky the better.
"City lights and moonlight keep urban skies from being completely dark, so the farther away from the city聮s light pollution you can get, the better," Skelton said. "A good location for viewing the meteor shower will be away from the city, and have a clear view so you can see meteors in different parts of the sky."
The Perseid meteor shower is named for the Perseus constellation from which the meteors, or shooting stars, appear to radiate, and it occurs every August. On other nights during the year, only five to 10 meteors per hour can be seen.
Meteor showers occur when the Earth crosses the path of a comet, sweeping up debris left behind along the orbit. Millions of chunks of ice and dust make up the tail of a comet. These chunks of space junk might be as small as a pea and travel through the solar system at more than 36,000 miles per hour.
"We see these space chunks as meteors only when they come close to the Earth and enter the atmosphere," Skelton said.
The light from the meteor comes from air around it glowing as the high-speed space rock breaks down the air molecules. Skelton said most meteors melt down and boil away many miles above the Earth, high in the atmosphere.
The Perseid meteor shower is caused by the Earth passing through the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle, which is in orbit around the sun.
The moon will be almost full and will be visible in the sky all night, which may limit the viewing of some meteors, Skelton said. Interested viewers should avoid using binoculars and telescopes, which narrow the field of vision he said.