Monday, August 10, 2020

APOD - Perseids from Perseus

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2020 August 10
See Explanation.  Moving the cursor over the image will bring up an annotated version.  Clicking on the image will bring up the highest resolution version  available.

Perseids from Perseus
Image Credit & Copyright: Petr Horálek

Explanation: Where are all these meteors coming from? In terms of direction on the sky, the pointed answer is the constellation of Perseus. That is why the meteor shower that peaks tomorrow night is known as the Perseids -- the meteors all appear to came from a radiant toward Perseus. In terms of parent body, though, the sand-sized debris that makes up the Perseids meteors come from Comet Swift-Tuttle. The comet follows a well-defined orbit around our Sun, and the part of the orbit that approaches Earth is superposed in front of the Perseus. Therefore, when Earth crosses this orbit, the radiant point of falling debris appears in Perseus. Featured here, a composite image taken over eight nights and containing over 400 meteors from 2018 August's Perseids meteor shower shows many bright meteors that streaked over Kolonica Observatory in Slovakia. This year's Perseids holds promise to be one of the best meteor showers of the year.

Tomorrow's picture: high on jupiter


< | Archive | Submissions | Index | Search | Calendar | RSS | Education | About APOD | Discuss | >

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important Notices
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.


This is an automated email. If you notice any problems, just send me a note at gtracy@gmail.com. You can add and remove email addresses to this distribution list here, https://apodemail.org.Unsubscribe

No comments:

Post a Comment