You should be able to see plenty of Perseid meteors (if your sky is clear) in all of the night between August 12 and 13, especially toward dawn when their radiant (the point from which they seem to fly out) is highest or overhead.
The “Meteors” section of our Astronomical Calendar 2023 gives, as for the other major showers of the year, a set of four useful illustrations:
– The space path of the meteor stream, to show how it intersects the August part of Earth’s orbit; the constellation (Perseus) from which the meteors appear to radiate; Earth’s spinning globe, to show the directions from which sunlight and moonlight and the meteors are coming; and the eastern horizon for an American location as the radiant climbs into view about 11 PM.
See the end note about enlarging illustrations.
But these graphics can be viewed in as close detail as you like in the online version of the book.
2023 should be a good year for the Perseids because a slender Moon won’t rise till well after midnight.
The name of the meteors means that they are the “children” of constellation Perseus. Names with this Greek-derived ending are also given to families of plants and animals, such as Ursidae, the bears, and, originally, to human lineages such as dynasties – the Seleucids, the Arsacids, the Abbasids. There was in Greek legend a Perseid dynasty: the hero Perseus himself, founder of Mycenae, and his successors. It happens that I’m just now composing a cover picture and story for Astronomical Calendar 2024 involving all that and a invented shower of ancient time.
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Somewhat to my surprise (given how hit-and-miss the weather always is here in Britain, especially this washed-out “summer”), there were some clearer spells again last night, August 12-13, with the better ones around from about midnight UTC onwards. In total, I was able to watch with little to no clouds for just over 2h20m between midnight and 02:53 UT, when clouds returned with a vengeance, spotting 75 Perseids in that time, and 23 sporadics. That level of activity is fairly typical for past Perseid peaks I’ve seen, except for a couple of the stronger ones. About 25% of Perseids left persistent trains. The shower meteors had their normal brightness range under the +5.7 to +5.9 limiting magnitude skies, with a dozen negative-magnitude events, of which the brightest was a flaring, blue-violet, magnitude -5 fireball, that left a 4-second train after the brighter flare, at 01:45 UT, shooting over through Cassiopeia and Cygnus. Event of the night, technically events (plural), was a group of four Perseids that shot down almost together in a scatter over Bootes-Corona Borealis-Hercules at 00:58 UT, magnitudes +2, +3 and two of +4! Ironically, though not for the first time, my best-seen bright meteor was a delightful, slow-moving, yellow sporadic that rose up from Auriga to Perseus towards the end of my efforts, at 02:43, caught right in central vision. I hope others looking-in here had similar, or better, good fortune.
The Perseids are unlikely to be visible from this part of the world.
I’m going to give it a whirl. Clear skies tonight so perhaps I’ll get lucky. So many clouds here in Greenville. Thanks for the reminder and wonderful charts as usual! ; )
Managed a couple of hours of watching in NE England for the Perseids last night (Aug 11-12) before the clouds became too troublesome. Limiting magnitude wasn’t the best, at +5.6, though not too bad, and observed Perseid rates were just into double figures in each hour. Nothing too spectacular – brightest was a mag -1 Perseid at 22:59 UTC, yellow-green in colour, with a two-second persistent train. Seven of my 27 Perseids left persistent trains, which is a pretty typical proportion for these swift meteors, and the activity levels overall were about what I’d have expected roughly a day ahead of the expected peak tonight. The waning crescent Moon was just lifting above the rooftops by the time I decided the clouds were too irritating to continue, around 00:40 UT, which was a pleasing close-out, especially with Jupiter shining brilliantly higher in the eastern sky by then too. Good luck for those hoping for a fine showing later today!
The images on this page are in such a low resolution that they are useless when enlarged. I was hoping to place these in a presentation for tonight’s outreach with the public, and of course provide credit. Can you release a better version?
You are right, and I learn that next time I do this (for the next major meteor hsower) I should insert te four images separately, instead of trying to include them in one screenshot.
I’m afraid it’s now too late for your presentation, Jim, unless you email me to say you’d still like to have the images now.