The free online live stream will start at 21:30 EDT on Saturday (01:30 GMT on Sunday) and can be viewed at the Virtual Telescope Project WebTV page, YouTube channel and here on courtesy of the Virtual Telescope Project. Coming from the remote Maremma countryside, the telescope will enjoy the perfect dark skies from which to see the fireballs and bright streaks of the Perseids. (Image credit: Created in Canva by Daisy Dobrijevic)įor skywatchers who want to see the Perseids at their peak and can't get away from the bright lights of the city, the Virtual Telescope Project will live stream the event from its all-sky camera at its facility in Italy. If you want to hunt for meteors you should always come prepared. Smaller fragments of debris can pass further into Earth's atmosphere as they are being vaporized, with this more gradual destruction leaving longer streaks of light in their wake. As a result, at an altitude of between around 44 miles (70 km) and 62 miles (100 km) over Earth larger fragments of rock and ice explode as bright fireballs. The debris causes the air in front of it to be compressed and heated to thousands of degrees. As it does, fragments of ice and dust enter Earth's atmosphere at speeds as great as 130,000 miles per hour. This is left around the sun as clouds of gritty debris, which flatten out, creating a stream of cometary material around the sun.Īs Earth takes its own yearly trip around the sun, every summer between July and August it passes through this debris stream. As this gas escapes the comet, it blows away fragments of ice, dust, and rock. When the comet gets close to the sun, radiation from our star heats it causing solid ice to transform immediately into gas, a process called sublimation. Despite traveling at speeds 60 times greater than the top speed of a jet fighter here on Earth, Comet Swift–Tuttle still takes a leisurely 133 Earth years to fully orbit the sun. The Perseid meteor shower originates from a cloud of debris left in the inner solar system by the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, informally known as Comet Swift–Tuttle.Ī 16-mile (26-kilometer) wide body of dust, ice, rock, and dark organic material, Comet Swift–Tuttle orbits the sun at a speed of 93,600 miles per hour. The Perseids' radiant is in the Perseus Constellation, this is where most of the meteors will appear to radiate from.
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