JACKSON, Wyo. — The annual Perseid meteor shower lighting up Wyoming skies is set to peak tonight.
The shower is caused by dust trains from the Swift-Tuttle comet. The debris enters the earth’s atmosphere and burns up due to the friction with the air, creating a meteor shower, or what appear to be shooting stars. Check out the visualizer on MeteorShowers.org.
According to the American Meteor Society, stargazers in rural areas might glimpse anywhere between 30 and 50 meteors per hour. The new moon will not interfere with visibility, but smoky skies and potential clouds could hamper the view. Wyoming Stargazing is holding a free viewing event in R Park tonight from 10 p.m. to midnight. NASA will host a virtual watch-party on its YouTube channel beginning at 10 p.m. and featuring shots from the International Space Station.
The meteor shower began in mid-July and has steadily increased through mid-August. Expect it to slowly fade in intensity until Aug. 24.
“The first record of the Perseid meteor shower comes from a Chinese manuscript written in A.D. 36,” says the Old Farmer’s Almanac. “The Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli linked the Perseid shower to Comet Swift-Tuttle in 1866, four years after the comet was detected by modern astronomers.”
If you snap photos of the shower, we’d love to feature them in an upcoming SNAPPED. Send images to tips@buckrail.com.
