For years, astronomy amateurs in the Arab world have been waiting for the arrival of 2023, when they will be able to observe the Perseid meteor shower with a purity not seen in previous years, as bright moonlight coincides with the nights of meteor showers.
As for the night between August 12 and 13 next, the moon will be a thin crescent that will rise at dawn, leaving much of the night open for observing meteors.
What is a meteor shower?
Every night you may see a meteor or two in the sky, but on certain nights every year the density of meteors increases, reaching hundreds, and that is the meteor shower.
To understand why this rain falls so often, imagine you’re driving down a highway and you pass a cloud of smoke from a fire on the side of the road. This is what Earth does. As it orbits the Sun, it can pass some comet or asteroid remnants, so those rocky remnants enter the atmosphere at high speeds and rub against it, burning up and causing meteors.
For this reason, the meteors have specific dates each year that coincide with the Earth’s encounter with these remnants, and the Perseid meteors in particular begin on July 17 and end on August 24 each year, and you can see many meteors on those nights, where the Earth meets the remnants of the “109Tu-Swift-Swift” comet.
But at the height of that shower, the moment when Earth passes the largest amount of comet debris, around 90-100 meteors can be observed every hour, which happens during the night between August 12 and 13. As the morning approaches, the rate of meteor showers increases, and this happens in all countries of the Arab world, each according to its local time.
The Perseid meteors are named for the location in the sky where the meteors radiate (the center of the meteors), the constellation Perseus.
How do I track the Perseids?
Meteor showers are events that require no astronomical equipment, all you need is to relax, lie flat on the ground, raise your head fully to the sky, and then contemplate and enjoy the meteors.
A rooftop is usually a good place to observe, but unfortunately, city lights blind us from seeing many meteors, and in a city with lots of light, you won’t see more than 5 meteors every hour. In remote locations, such as the desert or villages far from cities, you can easily see a maximum of 100 Perseid meteors per hour.
Perseids are the most important showers in the Arab world because they are during the summer holiday months and their peak coincides with night in the Arab world’s sky, so sky buffs wait to experience their magnificent glow from the sea to the Gulf.
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