The Upcoming Perseids

[Dave Mitsky]

There's a chance that the Perseid meteor shower will be a particularly good one this year.

The following links may prove useful:

http://skyandtelescope.com/printable/obser...rticle_1292.asp (http://skyandtelescope.com/printable/observing/objects/meteors/article_1292.asp)

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/25...erseids2004.htm (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/25jun_perseids2004.htm)

http://celestialdelights.info/ms/Perseid_O..._Outbursts.html (http://celestialdelights.info/ms/Perseid_Outbursts.html)

http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showe...perseidobs.html (http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/perseidobs.html)

Dave Mitsky

[The Meal]

It always warms my cockles when I open up one of Dave's posts and I've already visited half of the links he's identified. I've been eagerly awaiting this year's Perseids -- to the point that I'm taking Thursday and Friday off from my day job and my daughter and I are going to have one last astronomical adventure before she goes back to school. :)

I've been pretty lucky in evenings past with catching meteors in my 10x50 binocs fairly regularly. Hopefully we'll get a big peak this year and I'll have another of those "WTF is that?!?" split seconds before I realize just what I saw in the binos.

http://www.starwarssource.net/GGOC/Images/SP_ATTACK.GIF

:D

~The Meal

[Betelgeuse]

Thank you for the useful set of links.

I'm looking forward to the shower and I hope that it will be a success and that I'll be able to get a clear view of the night sky on the actual night.

[Tom2Mars]

Dave!!!!! Thank You for the links!!!!!

At the second one, I saw a link to a 3D reference for the Swift-Tuttle comet, and ran into the "Near Earth Object Program" at:

NEO Simulator (http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db_shm?sstr=2000%20AG6)

It has a Java Applet running a simulation and under the Heading "Close Approaches" is a good sized list of Objects, their size and relative speed, and one can see the orbital paths and dates and visualize the best times to go out a grab an asteroid for use as shield mass for one's big rotating space station. I mean, if that's what a person is into. B)

I had asked for a list like this in another post, and this is a good one. The simulator is a nice bonus. The link above was selected for object 2000AG6, and July 27, 2005 is a nice date. It's a yummy one too, at 23 to 51 meters across. :P

Thanks Again!

[Callisto]

I'm not so lucky when it comes to meteor showers because where I live there are too many trees and I can't see anything sometimes I'm lucky enough to see a few meteors per shower.
Since I'm only 15 I can't drive to a place good for stargazing plus tommorow school starts for me. But that wont stop me from waking up at 2 am and try to catch a few meteors.
Can somebody try and take some pictures and post them in the Astrophotography section it would be pretty cool to see what kind of images will be taken.

[Betelgeuse]

I know how you feel "Callisto"! My dad has to drive me places for me to go star gazing too!

I've checked out those links from Dave and they are actually very helpful! Thanks!