08/06/2018 – Ephemeris – The meteors of August, the Perseids are showing up now

Ephemeris for Monday, August 6th. The Sun rises at 6:34. It’ll be up for 14 hours and 27 minutes, setting at 9:01. The Moon, 2 days past last quarter, will rise at 2:27 tomorrow morning.

Over the past several weeks folks outdoors at night might have been seeing some shooting stars or meteors appearing to zip past in the sky. The ones I’m talking about seem to come from the northeast. These are the precursors of the Perseid meteor shower which will reach its peak on the night of August 12 and 13 this year. Over the millennia the meteoroid stream that feeds the meteors to our skies has spread out to last over a month from the latter half of July to three-quarters of August. We’ll meet the culprit for this show tomorrow. I try to use the proper terminology for all this. Meteoroid is the tiny body in space. In the Perseid’s case the size of a grain of sand to a pea. Meteor is the streak we see in the sky as it burns up.  Meteorite is the body that makes it to the ground.  To my knowledge no Perseid meteoroid has made it that far.

The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.

Addendum

The Perseid radiant at 11 p.m. tonight, August 6, 2018. Note that the radiant position is different from what I show on my charts for the month. The radiant there is for the night of the Maximum, August 12th. The radiant point shifts with time due to Earth’s changing position with the meteoroid stream. Click on image to enlarge. Created using Stellarium.