August 9, 2009 - Light Show

Welcome to the Nature Notebook.

The annual summer Perseid meteor shower is one of the best to observe, producing up to sixty meteors per hour at its peak. You might be able to see Perseid meteors any night between July 23 and August 22, but the height of activity is during the night of August 12 into the early morning of August 13. The light of a waxing gibbous moon will interfere with viewing in the evening hours, but once it sets, observing conditions will improve. The hours before sunrise on Thursday should provide some spectacular viewing provided there is no cloud cover. The radiant, or the point from which the meteors seem to originate, is in the constellation Perseus, in the northeast after midnight. The meteors cover a large part of the sky, however, so just look up and enjoy the light show.
 
This is PPL's naturalist, Jon Beam, with the Nature Notebook for WVIA.