Nearly all the parts are in place for a great night of viewing one of the most flashy night sky events of the year: the Perseid meteor shower. Now all that is needed, says physics professor Ronen Plesser, is a good rain before.
The public is invited to a special occasion of Duke's Public Stargazing at 11 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 12, at the five-year-old Department of Physics' Teaching Observatory in Duke Forest. That's when the meteor shower will be at its best.
Plesser, one of the organizers of the Public Stargazings, said the meteor showers have been less spectacular than in the '90s, when the comet responsible for the shower passed the point in its orbit where it intersects with the Earth's. However, he noted that Sunday is a new moon, meaning there will be no moonlight to lighten the sky.
"In an ideally dark location, predictions are for as many as 100 meteors per hour," said Plesser. "Our site, while surely darker than town, is not ideal. How many meteors we see probably depends mostly on the weather -- recent hazy skies have been very bad for visibility. A good rain shower would do wonders to clear things up, as well as save some vegetation."
The Perseid shower is an annual August event, coming when the Earth passes near the debris of the Swift-Tuttle comet. (Click here for background information about the shower from Space.com.).
The Duke observatory is deep in Duke Forest off of Cornwallis Road. (Click here for map and directions). Plesser offered the following tips, especially for first-time visitors.
1) Dress for the forest, especially in terms of footwear.
2) Check the website Sunday afternoon for late weather cancellation.
3) Anyone with a camera and a tripod should be able to get pretty interesting photos if willing to repeatedly take long exposures until random chance has a few meteors crossing the field of view.
After taking the summer off, Public Stargazing will start up again on Friday, Aug. 17, with an open house at 9 p.m. The events will be held two Fridays a month. Telescopes aren't a great aid for a meteor shower, but during regular events, the observatory's five Meade LX200 GPS Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes will be aimed at a variety of celestial bodies, from Saturn's rings to nebula. The observatory's platform has facilities for visitors to bring their own telescopes.