Perseid fireball taken by Jimmy Westlake on 8 Aug 2007
Click here to go to the Perseid Meteor Gallery.
It’s the Perseids and Aurigids (this time, it’s amazing!) as well as Delta Aquarids which force me to take a break from my revision for this examination week to blog now.
Perseid meteor shower is going to peak on 12-13 August 2007. Some people have already reported that they saw some bright Perseid fireball down to magnitude -5. It’s as bright as a full moon! By the way, before that time, you can still spot some Delta Aquarids from Aquarius (the meteor shower is named after its radiant point).
According to The University of Western Ontario which operates a 17-38MHz meteor orbit radar, Delta Aquarid meteor shower was more active than Perseid meteor shower on 8 August and slowly Perseid will override it.
Aurigid meteor shower is predicted as a meteor storm. It peaks on 1136 UT8 1 September 2007. Its peak rate is not less than 100 meteors/hour as predicted by Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and Jeremie Vaubaillon of Caltech. However, some of their optimist colleagues said that it can be over 300 meteors/hour! So, guys, watch out for this meteor shower, the sky is going to be scenetic!
