Via National Geographic: "Unusually Good" Meteor Shower Expected Thursday

Meteor showers occur when Earth orbits through trails of dust shed by comets on their repeated trips through the solar system. The tiny bits of debris, no larger than a grain of sand, light up when they strike Earth's upper atmosphere. In the process, they create what are commonly referred to as shooting stars.

The Perseid meteor shower officially peaks at 7 a.m. ET on Thursday, August 12 and astronomers say the best time to catch an eyeful of shooting stars - about 50 to 60 per hour - is from midnight to dawn.

"It's a very reliable shower. You can bet your bottom dollar that people will see meteors," said Mark Bailey, director of the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland.

[...]

Swift-Tuttle was independently discovered by U.S. astronomers Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle in 1862, but the earliest references to the Perseid meteor shower date back to A.D. 36 in Chinese records, according to information compiled by Gary Kronk, a St. Louis, Missouri-based science writer who maintains the Comets & Meteor Showers Web site.

References to the shower also appear in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean records throughout the 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries but only sporadically between the 12th and 19th centuries.

In European countries the Perseid meteors are also known as the Tears of St. Lawrence, because they occur days after a festival marking the Catholic saint's August 10 death in A.D. 258.

The Perseids were first recognized as an annual shower appearing to come from the constellation Perseus in 1835. Today they are the most well known of the annual meteor showers, consistently putting on a good show in the dog days of summer, when the weather is usually conducive to late-night stargazing.

"Only the Geminids beat them in terms of putting on a show year after year. Caught up with that, the Perseids are a summer shower, unlike the Geminids, which occur in December," Cooke said. "You don't have to bundle up with 6 inches (15 centimeters) of clothing to go observe them," he added.

From NASA: Anticipating the Perseids

From Universe Today: Get Ready for the Perseids

Major Meteor Showers in 2004

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