No eclipse, but maybe some meteors

The Milky Way is at its best now through October. Passing directly overhead, it splits the sky north to south, as seen in this image taken last week from Monhegan island in Maine. (Photo by Alyssa Hammel)

If you open Facebook or other websites, you’ve been told that a don’t-miss Blood Moon lunar eclipse is coming up on August 7. Of course, that’s wrong. The eclipse will be invisible from all of North America.

You’ll also see an artist’s conception of a rich meteor shower, with numerous colorful shooting stars simultaneously ripping across the sky. This is mostly wrong, yet here perhaps there’s something that can be salvaged. On the night of August 12 we’ll get the famous Perseid shower, normally delivering the year’s second-best meteor display. But alas, this year a nearly full moon will brighten the sky, allowing only the brightest meteors to appear, which means the usual 60-per-hour rate will instead be whittled down to about 12 per hour. One every five minutes.

That may be worth it. If you think so, here are four vital tips. If you fail to follow them, you’ll surely be disappointed. We need good weather. This means mostly clear skies and no serious haze. So if there are Canadian forest fires throwing smoke over our region, or high humidity so that the daytime sky is milky and not nicely blue, forget the meteors this year. Or tune in again on December 13, when the year’s best shower is expected to perform under excellent conditions.

Be comfortable. Bring a blanket or lounge chair to your lawn, facing in your clearest direction or else straight overhead.

Get under an open expanse of sky. Don’t try to peer through an opening between trees. The exact direction to look doesn’t matter much. But keep staring upward. Don’t look down a lot to talk to companions. These meteors are super-fast and only appear for a second or two. Look away and you’ll miss many of them.

Some cool Perseid facts: Most are the size of apple seeds. All of them travel at 37 miles a second. Their distance from you is always between 50 and 100 miles. And, you don’t see the actual ice-pellets, but a foot-wide sphere of superheated glowing air that surrounds each of them.

Usually these meteors greatly intensify after midnight. But that pesky moon will be rising a couple of hours after nightfall, so this is one of those rare years when it might be best to conveniently observe starting around 9 p.m., when full darkness falls.

Happy hunting!