Everyone’s favourite meteor shower, the Perseids, are expected to hit their dazzling peak over the US within the next two or three days. Even if your elsewhere on the planet, you’ll have a front row seat. Tonight, NASA is streaming its first Perseid webcast, replete with cosmic debris, sky fireballs and meteor experts.
Beginning at 1pm AEST and ending at 5pm, NASA will broadcast footage of the Perseids from its Slooh Space Camera, a robotic camera that can be accessed from the web. According to the Agency, we can expect to see as many as 100 meteors per hour at the peak of the shower, including “many fireballs visible in the night sky (!!!).”
As an added bonus during tonight’s webcast, NASA’s resident meteor experts, Bill Cooke, Danielle Moser, and Rhiannon Blaauw, will be on hand to chat and answer questions about the shower, which has been observed for over 2000 years. The Perseids are actually the cosmic pollution created by the comet Swift-Tuttle, which made its last path by Earth in 1992. Since it only appears every 130 years, we’ll all be dead before it returns — but that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate the debris that it left behind. Tune in below or visit the webcast here.
Image via NASA.