A Perseid shooting star near the Pleiades over Woodingdean, Sussex, on the early morning of the 13th August, 2013. Credit: Darren Baskill.
Friday, Aug 12, sees the annual maximum of the Perseid meteor shower. This year, as well as the normal peak on the night of Aug. 12-13, meteor scientists are predicting additional enhanced activity in the shower the night before, as Earth passes through a dense clump of cometary debris.
Meteors ( ‘shooting stars’) are the result of small particles, some as small as a grain of sand, entering Earth’s atmosphere at high speed. The parent comet, Swift-Tuttle, which last passed near Earth in 1992, leaves this debris in Earth’s path...
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