#swift-tuttle

Uhh I posted this is the element cattos server a while ago but here’s 109P/swift-tuttle

Diagram showing the ‘radiant’ of the Perseid shower (marked with the red cross). Graphic by the blogger.

Sunday night (12th August) marks the peak of the year’s best meteor shower, and this year the circumstances for viewing them are the best they have been in over a decade.

Each August, the Earth’s orbit carries our planet through streams of debris shed by Comet Swift-Tuttle, which last flew through the inner solar system in 1992. The orbit of this comet is arranged just right such that it intersects our orbit, although fortunately the Earth has never found itself in the same place as the comet at the same time (although that outcome is not impossible!)

Comet Swift-Tuttle, 1992. Credit: NASA

With an orbital period of 130 years, no one who saw its last apparition will likely be alive to see its next. But on each trip around the sun, Swift-Tuttle leaves a trail of dust in its wake. As the Earth plows through this part of its orbit, some of those dust grains are intercepted by our atmosphere, and we see them as swarms of bright shooting stars across our night skies.

From a dark location, up to 100 meteors per hour may be seen, with occasional outbursts to even higher hourly rates. The meteor show is known as the “Perseids” because the tracks of the meteors appear to converge toward the constellation of Perseus.

2018 is an especially good year for the Perseids because the maximum intensity of the shower occurs a little more than 24 hours after the new Moon, so that there is effectively no moonlight in the night sky for the meteors to compete against. That enables good visibility of fainter Perseids, which would otherwise be lost in the glare of the Moon in other years. That means that hourly rates reported by observers in 2018 are likely to be higher than in other years.

Like other meteors, Perseids begin as pieces of cosmic dust little bigger than sand grains. After leaving the surface of Comet Swift-Tuttle, they may orbit the sun for hundreds or thousands of years before approaching the Earth. Impacting the upper atmosphere at relative speeds approaching 60 kilometers per second (134,000 miles per hour), friction with air molecules heats the dust to temperatures of over 1,000 degrees. Elements in the disintegrating dust grain, such as iron, magnesium, and sodium, are energized by the heating and radiate away some of the energy as light of particular colors like green and yellow. Some 4.5 billion years after their creation, these grains end their existence in mere seconds.

The best views of the Perseids come after local midnight, when the direction of the Earth’s rotation takes us toward the forward direction of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun; whereas earlier in the evening, meteors must catch up to Earth’s motion to reach the atmosphere, after midnight the Earth is more directly moving through the stream of dust particles.

To see the Perseids, find an outdoor space with a relatively clear horizon toward the northeast. Activity will begin to pick up by about 10pm local time, and steadily increase until after midnight. Here are some tips to improve the experience:

Safety first! Carry a flashlight to help navigate in the dark, especially in unfamiliar places. Red or brown paper placed over the front lens of the flashlight will help preserve your eyes’ sensitivity to faint light.

Use a reclining lawn chair or chaise lounge to relieve fatigue while looking up at the sky for long periods of time.

Bring plenty of water, too, because it’s possible to dehydrate in warm temperatures on summer nights.

If you’re observing after midnight, remember to dress warmly as the night may become quite cool in the pre-dawn hours.

The Comet That Created The Perseids Might Bring An End To Humanity

“Every object in our Solar System that takes the plunge from out beyond Neptune to our inner reaches, where the rocky planets lie, will become a comet. As it nears the Sun, its ices melt, creating the tails we associate with them, and also creating a debris path that can create meteor showers if they cross Earth's orbit. For thousands of years, the most consistent, spectacular meteor shower has been the Perseids, created by Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. 

 At its incredibly large size (26 kilometers across) and speed, it contains nearly 30 times the energy of the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs. Over the next few thousand years, it will come perilously close to Earth. If Jupiter — which it also passes by — gives it just the slightest gravitational kick, it could be flung into the Sun, ejected from the Solar System, or hurtled directly into our world. If this were to happen, and it's a real possibility some 2400 years from now, it would mark the largest mass extinction our world has seen in hundreds of millions of years.”

Enjoying the Perseid meteor shower this year, as perhaps you do every August? As you look up, the great cosmic show might have a lot more to offer than mere streaks of light, due to cometary debris brightly burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere. This year, Jupiter has slightly disturbed the debris stream, resulting in an increase in the number of meteors-per-hour, as the stream passes quite centrally through Earth’s location. Someday, unless we continue to get lucky, Jupiter just might have that same effect on the comet that spawned the Perseids: comet Swift-Tuttle. Only, instead of an enhanced shower, we’d get struck by this comet. With a top speed of 60 km/s and a size of 26 km in diameter, this would result in an impact 28 times more energetic than the impactor that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Cómo, cuándo y dónde ver el espectáculo celeste del verano Cada agosto, el cielo nos regala uno de los espectáculos más esperados del año: la lluvia de estrellas Perseidas. Si alguna vez has deseado algo al ver una estrella fugaz, este es tu momento. No necesitas telescopio, ni ser astrónomo, solo ganas de mirar hacia arriba y dejarte maravillar.En este artículo te cuento todo lo que necesitas…

The Perseid meteor shower is a yearly event that happens from mid-July to the start of September, hitting its peak around August 13th. At its peak, there are up to 100 meteors per hour, with a velocity of around 59 kilometers per second.

The Perseid meteors originate from the comet Swift-Tuttle. The Perseids are known for fireballs and their long tails. The fireballs have magnitudes greater than -3.

To view the Perseid meteor shower, being in the Northern Hemisphere is a definite plus. Going out after midnight makes it easier to spot the meteors and fireballs, but they can be spotted as early as 22.00 (10 pm).

The Perseids are named after the constellation they appear to come from (the radiant), Perseus. While they do not come from Perseus, looking at Perseus will help you spot the Perseids.

Swift-Tuttle

Swift-Tuttle finishes an orbit around the Sun every 133 years and was last in the inner solar system in 1992. Swift-Tuttle is a large comet, with a nucleus around 26 kilometers across, which is about twice the size of the estimated size of the object that ended the Cretaceous Period.

Swift-Tuttle's other name is Comet 109P, where the P signifies that it is a periodic comet, and has a orbital period of less than 200 years.

We can’t all gather on the southern Black Sea coast of Bulgaria to watch the Perseids meteor shower tonight, but perhaps this amazing photo from that location will inspire you to head outside for a look at your own skies. Every August, Earth passes through the trail of debris left by Comet Swift-Tuttle. When Swift-Tuttle’s ‘dirty snowballs’ of dust, ice, rock, and other material hit Earth’s atmosphere, they burn up as the ‘shooting stars’ of the Perseids. If you can, get away from city lights any time between now and Aug 24, find a safe spot outside, and let your eyes adjust to the dark for about 30 minutes. Look to the northern portion of the sky, or find the Perseus constellation, and you’ll start seeing streaks of light tumbling through the sky.