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Balls of fire blaze across the night sky in this NASA footage of the annual Perseid meteor shower.
The video, captured overnight August 3-4, shows “shooting stars” or tiny space rocks burning in the atmosphere in plain view of NASA’s All-sky Fireball camera array.
The All-Sky Fireball Network includes 17 cameras across the United States that scan the sky for meteors. Its goal is to help protect spacecraft, which can be vulnerable to punctures caused by high-speed rocks entering Earth’s atmosphere.
Video: First Perseid meteors captured by NASA’s All-Sky Fireball Network
Related: Perseid meteor shower 2021: when, where and how to see it
The Perseid meteor shower, which peaks in August, was blamed for the demise of the European satellite Olympus-1 in 1993. A generation later, the University of Western Canada in London, Ont. to model rain for the safety of spacecraft.
“By monitoring and modeling, we can inform satellite operators that a meteor explosion is imminent and that they should orient their spacecraft in such a way as to minimize the cross section relative to the direction in which the meteors are moving.” Western said Professor Peter Brown, who researches meteors using a network of Canadian cameras and radars operated by the university, said in a statement.
The Perseids occur when Earth flows into the creek left by Comet Swift-Tuttle, which visits the Inner Solar System approximately every 133 years. (The last time was in 1992, so he won’t come back until 2125 if the predictions hold true.)
This year, the peak of the Perseids arrives on Thursday night (August 12), when the moon is a thin crescent in the sky. While the number of Perseids will be average, the dark skies are ideal for viewing the shower – a sight famous for producing fireballs like what NASA captured earlier in the month. NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke said viewers can expect to see up to 100 Perseid meteors per hour from dark sky locations.
The meteors appear to emanate from the constellation Perseus – somewhat near Ursa Major or Ursa Major in the sky. That said, shooting stars are relatively easy to spot almost anywhere in the sky and sometimes occur as often as once every few minutes.
To watch the show, astronomers usually recommend that you get out around 2 a.m. local time, bring a lawn chair and sweater against any morning chill, and relax. No special equipment is needed; only your naked eyes will show you meteors.
As the Perseids enter the atmosphere at a speed of 37 miles (60 km) per second – about 30 times faster than an F-35 fighter jet, Western said – the millimeter-sized meteors release light when they collide with air molecules. This is due to charged particles, called electrons, torn from Earth’s atmospheric atoms during collisions, Western said.
“It only takes a brief moment before atoms capture an electron and emit light, that’s when you can see a glowing trail in the sky,” Denis Vida said, Global Meteor Network project manager, in the same press release. The network includes more than 450 meteor video cameras hosted by professionals and amateur astronomers in 23 countries.
Future research for meteorological astronomers includes building better predictive models of meteor showers based on new observations from the network and other camera sets, Western noted.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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