Meteor shower to light up sky

Perseid show to feature shooting stars during late night on Aug. 11

Get ready to wish upon a shooting star -- a whole bunch of shooting stars. The Perseid meteor shower is coming this month.

The best time to enjoy the view, astronomers say, will fall between the late night hours of Aug. 11 and the wee morning hours of Aug. 12. This year's shower will occur four days before the new moon and could make for very favorable viewing, if you're willing to travel a bit.

"The further you can get away from light sources, the better the viewing will be," said Robert Pippin, manager of the planetarium at Southern Nevada Community College. "Downtown Las Vegas is the worst place in the whole country to be."

Even going out to Red Rock won't give top-notch views. The Las Vegas Astronomy Society (www.astronomyvegas. com) has tentative plans to view from the Lake Mead area instead.

Lee Kimpton, a science teacher who lives in Summerlin, goes one better. She plans to take her two daughters, Chelsea, a seventh-grader, and Mason, a fifth-grader, to Northern Nevada to view the Perseid shower.

"We'll go up to Great Basin (National Park) and camp," she said. "It's perfectly clear up there and there's no dust. It'll be great."

Random meteors normally appear at a rate of about six per hour. This year's Perseid shower is expected to result in 100 shooting stars per hour.

The shower will occur during a waning crescent moon which will rise at 2:26 a.m. Aug. 12, so it will not interfere much with viewing. The best time to check out the meteor shower, Pippin said, is between midnight and 3 a.m.

For those who don't want to stay up that late, try looking skyward about 9 or 10 p.m. on Aug. 11 when Perseus is low in the eastern sky. There won't be as many meteors to see, but any you do spot should be spectacular.

Astronomers call shooting stars that begin at the horizon and travel horizontally "Earthgrazers." Earthgrazers are generally slow and colorful. Because they are so bright, they are a good target for city dwellers.

The meteoroids of the Perseid stream range in size from pebbles to sand grains. They hit the upper atmosphere at a speed of 60 kilometers per second.

A shooting star, or meteor, makes a fiery trail as it burns up, normally occurring 50-70 miles above Earth.

Other upcoming meteor showers for this year include the Orionid shower around Oct. 21, the Leonid showers about Nov. 17 and the Geminid event, best seen around Dec. 14.


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