Look for the Perseids, they will be flying the most from August 12th to 13th
Published on 06/08/2023
Antiquity says: “Saint Lawrence weeps tears of fire.” Hence the alternative name for the Perseids – “Tears of Saint Lawrence”. The Italian martyr we remember on August 10 was one of the church dignitaries who guarded property in the Roman Empire. However, since he gave everything to the poor, he was executed by the Emperor Valerian in a rather unpleasant way – he was roasted on a grate over hot coals. Since then, it is said that his glittering tears fall from the sky in August.
“What if it actually works? Be sure to prepare a wish. I’d rather just a few dozen. If the weather is nice, you will see a number of shooting stars. And you, as is well known, are more than romantic messengers of the future.” comments Jiří Dušek, director of the Brno Observatory and Planetarium, commander of the miracle machine. “Very exceptionally, we do not invite observers to Kraví hora. Light pollution prevents you from enjoying the Perseids in their full beauty. It will be much better to hunt for them somewhere under a dark sky, with a good view especially of the southeast, ideally of the entire sky. Lie down in your sleeping bag on a lounger or mat, or sit in an armchair. If you are lucky, you can see up to several dozen shooting stars between midnight and morning on the night of August 12-13, 2023. The moon won’t interfere, and it’s enough to look just like that – without a telescope.”
Of course, meteors have nothing to do with stars. On its way around the Sun every year between August 10 and 14, the planet Earth flies into a stream of tiny dust particles released from the nucleus of Comet Swift-Tuttle in past centuries. Some of these bodies crash directly into the Earth and, passing through its atmosphere, quickly heat up to the point where they vaporize. We will then see the light accompanying such an extinction – a meteor.
In the case of the stream of dust particles from comet Swift-Tuttle, it seems to us that the “shooting stars” fly out as if from the constellation Perseus, and that is why they are called the Perseids. The first records of its flights come from China in 36 AD. Chinese, Japanese and Korean astronomers followed them for several centuries. Also in our countries, August has been recorded as the month of “abundance of falling stars”.
The modern Perseid story begins in 1862, when American astronomers Lewis Swift and Horace Parnell Tuttle discovered a comet that moved along the same path as the Perseid stream. Gone were the romantic notions. Perseids are small dust particles that this comet scatters on its way around the Sun. At the same time, calculations indicate that the vlasatice will pass close by the Earth on September 15, 4479. It even seemed for a while that Comet Swift-Tuttle would turn into the largest Perseid, that is, that it would collide with Earth. It won’t happen. But if that happened, it would be a fatal disaster. The Swift-Tuttle core has a diameter of about 25 kilometers, so the impact energy would be several hundred times greater than that of the body that destroyed the dinosaurs (and two-thirds of other plants and animals).
You can watch the Perseids from anywhere
Of course, the weather must be nice on the night of August 12-13. You can also watch the night before and after this date. Find a place with a good view towards the east and south. White light is distracting, so the further you are from street lights, the better. Dimmed, red light, on the other hand, does not dazzle. Many meteors will fly especially between midnight and morning. Under ideal conditions, you will see up to ten meteors per hour. You don’t need any binoculars. Meteors look like glowing points that fly through part of the sky in a few seconds. Every wish is good in that case. I wish luck and experiences to ours facebook.com/hvezdarna.brno
The image Perseid by Petr Horálek was created by combining 43 fifteen-second panoramic shots in August 2020. In addition to the light trails of the disappearing particles of the comet Swift-Tuttle, which fly out of the constellation Perseus (their curved paths were created only after post-processing and display), the author and also part of Seč dam in the Iron Mountains.
2023-08-06 08:22:57
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