Persians tonight – Summer rain of "shooting stars"!



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Faithful to their summer rendezvous, the pretty Persians, the most spectacular summer rain of the "stars of the fall", will also know their peak in the heart of the summer, especially the evening of Monday, August 12, at dawn on Tuesday, in the night sky. from the northern hemisphere.

Those who are awake and if the sky has no clouds will have the opportunity to see the phenomenon. But this year, it will be the full moon of August 15, with the brightness of the big moon, which will be quite bright, will prevent meteorites to some extent from observing, so that only the brightest of the worlds will be able to see it. between them will be visible.

The Persians hit the raindrops because their "stars" are fast and bright, usually with long, inflamed tails. According to NASA, their record dates back to 1993, when about 300 meteors had been recorded.

They appear in almost all parts of the sky and not in one, although they seem to come mainly from the north-northeast, from the constellation Perseus, from where they were named.

Meteors begin to fall from around July 17, gradually thickening until August 24. The nearer the time that it approaches is near, the more likely you will be to see these "naked stars" bare eyes anywhere in the sky.

The Persians – recorded for the first time by Chinese astronomers in 36 AD – are caused by dust particles left by the enormous tail, tens of millions of kilometers long, of comet 109P / Swift-Tuttle, which pbades through Earth's orbit. The comet, discovered in 1862 by astronomers Lewis Swift and Hora Tuttle (so named), has a huge core of about 26 kilometers in diameter, much larger than the ten-kilometer asteroid that landed on Earth . 66 million years and destroyed the dinosaurs.

This comet is the largest known celestial body that crosses the Earth at regular intervals and takes about 133 years to complete a complete orbit around the Sun. Today, it is about five billion kilometers away and its next near-Earth crossing is scheduled for 2126 and does not appear to be a threat to our planet in the near future.

Its meteors, generally weighing less than one gram, enter the atmosphere at a speed of nearly 60 km / second and ignite at a height of about 100 km, at which time they become visible to observers. When approaching the ground at high speed, they dissolve by friction and overheating (1650 degrees Celsius), leaving traces of light.

According to the experts, the key to seeing a rain of light is, in addition to patience, its field of vision allowing to include as much dark sky as possible. Shooters can also – with a little luck – be photographed with a camera with a wide-angle lens and able to take long sequential shots.

Source: EIE-RES
Photo: Pathfinder

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