Vietnamese people will have a chance to see one of the most beautiful meteor showers of the year early in the morning of August 13.

Nguyen Duc Phuong from the Vietnam Astronomy and Cosmography Association said that this is the Perseids prolific meteor shower, which is associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle. The name derives in part from the word Perseides, a term found in Greek mythology referring to the descendants of Perseus. The stream of debris is called the Perseid cloud and stretches along the orbit of the comet Swift-Tuttle. The cloud consists of particles ejected by the comet as it travels on its 130-year orbit.

The Perseid meteor shower has been observed for about 2000 years, with the earliest information on this meteor shower coming from the Far East.

The shower is visible from mid-July each year, with a peak of activity between August 9 and 14, depending on the particular location of the stream. During the peak, the rate of meteors reaches 60 or more per hour. They can be seen all across the sky, but because of the path of Swift-Tuttle’s orbit, Perseids are primarily visible in the northern hemisphere. As with all meteor showers, the rate is greatest in the pre-dawn hours, since the side of the Earth nearest to the sun scoops up more meteors as the Earth moves through space. In 2009, the peak Zenithal Hourly Rate was about 120, but fainter meteors were washed out by a waning gibbous moon.

Experts say that during the peak this year, the rate or meteors may reach nearly 100 per hour. The best time for observing the meteor shower in Vietnam is around 2am on August 13.

A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed radiating from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth’s atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories. Most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand, so almost all of them disintegrate and never hit the Earth’s surface. Fragments that do survive impact with Earth’s surface are called meteorites. Intense or unusual meteor showers are known as meteor outbursts and meteor storms, which may produce more than 1,000 meteors an hour.

PV