Perseid Meteor Shower | 16 Aug 2024

Source: TH

In 2024, the Perseid meteor shower began around July and will last until late August with peak activity occurring from 11th to 13th August, 2024. The meteor shower might be visible to the naked eye in many places between midnight and dawn, especially in the northern hemisphere.

The Perseid meteors are debris left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the Sun in an elliptical path that takes 133 years to complete once.
- The name Perseid is believed to be derived from the Perseus constellation.
- Comets are frozen leftovers from the formation of the solar system composed of dust, rock, and ices.
When the earth moves through the cloud of debris intersecting its path around the Sun, Earth’s gravity pulls the debris towards itself, producing the meteor shower.
A meteor shower is a raining-down of meteors (small pieces of rock in space) over the earth from space at a particular time of year.
- Most meteors burn up in the atmosphere.
- Some that take a more tangential path through the air produce small fireballs.
Meteors are better known as "shooting stars".The light phenomenon in the atmosphere is called a "meteor", while the dust particle is called a "meteoroid".